Reproduced from the special edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education: Financial Strategies for a Crisis and BeyondBy ALEXANDER C. KAFKA  | December 2020As with the upstate New York consortia, New England has its own consortia within consortia and overlapping groups. For instance, a major driver of collaborative thinking in the region has been the 19-member Boston Consortium, founded in 1995. Its members share audit resources, risk-management and travel pools, specialty working groups (“communities of practice”), and professional-development programs. Three members — Babson College, Olin College of Engineering, and Wellesley College — have their own consortium, too, with student cross-registration opportunities and some shared administrative functions and student activities. In addition, originating from discussions in 2006 among Boston Consortium members, some colleges and charter...

Reproduced from the December 2020 issue of the Risk Retention ReporterDownload the December 2020 edHEALTH Risk Retention Reporter Reprint.pdfBy CYNTHIA MCGRATH | December 24, 2020As the coronavirus pandemic has decimated large swaths of the economy, higher education has been hit particularly hard. Many colleges and universities were already experiencing shaky finances before COVID. Sixty percent of schools missed their fall 2019 enrollment goals according to a February 2020 Chronicle of Higher Education story. Changing demographics and drops in international enrollment are cited as primary contributors. There’s been a significant drop in the U.S. birthrate, leading to projected enrollment declines for the foreseeable future. New government policies limited the number of international students who generally pay full tuition prices.The pandemic has exacerbated these financial pressures....

New England Journal of Higher EducationCYNTHIA McGRATH | April 1, 2020The COVID-19 pandemic is top of mind for everyone. There’s no aspect of our lives that’s been untouched. For colleges and universities, the novel coronavirus crisis has caused a major educational shift. Campuses are closed to students. Courses have moved online. And, many graduation ceremonies will be canceled or postponed. How long the new norm continues is unknown, but there is bound to be an effect on higher education budgets.Before COVID-19 entered our lives, colleges and universities were already facing enormous pressures on their bottom lines. Sixty percent of higher education institutions (HEIs) missed their fall 2019 enrollment goals, according to a recent Chronicle of Higher Education story. Changing demographics and drops in international enrollments are primary reasons. Moreover, the Great Recession of 20...

FRANKLIN, MA, January 23, 2019 – Attracting and retaining talented faculty and staff is a top concern of many colleges and universities. Dean College was looking to gain a competitive edge when it decided to improve its employee health benefits and join edHEALTH, a purchasing collaborative of 22 colleges and universities, effective January 1, 2020. The move halved employees’ out-of-pocket deductible.“Offering robust healthcare benefits enables us to attract and retain quality employees,” said Daniel Modelane, Vice President of Financial Services and Treasurer of Dean College. “The previous deductible was a lot of exposure for our employees, and this enhancement will be a helpful recruiting tool.”“Dean was looking to move to a self-insurance arrangement for staff healthcare costs,” said Sean Carney, Partner, 360 Corporate Benefit Advisors, the school’s benefits consultant. “Moving to e...

Yonkers, NY, January 21, 2020 – Sarah Lawrence College is taking a new and innovative approach to controlling rising faculty and staff healthcare costs: joining edHEALTH, a member-owned healthcare collaborative of 22 colleges, universities, and other educational institutions. Sarah Lawrence is the first member from the State of New York.As healthcare costs continue to rise as a percentage of operating budgets for higher education institutions across the country, Sarah Lawrence will be able to continue to provide high quality health insurance for its faculty and staff by leveraging the larger group’s purchasing power, and avoid costly year-to-year changes. In fact, by joining edHEALTH on January 1, 2020, Sarah Lawrence averted a potential double-digit healthcare cost increase and will be able to better predict and plan for future rate changes.In addition to Sarah Lawrence, Dean College...

Telemedicine expands care, adds exposuresBusiness InsuranceGLORIA GONZALEZ | November 4, 2018Telemedicine helps fill the gap for access to primary doctors and provides healthcare access to busy people.  However, the follow up care gap is inconsistent.Read the Business Insurance article - Telemedicine expands care, adds exposures

Future of Health Care event focuses on keeping employees healthy Pittsburgh Business TimesNICK KEPPLER | October 25, 2018Colleges and universities in Massachusetts were looking for ways to cut costs amid rapid growth in costs and tuition in higher education. This was the genesis of edHEALTH.Read the Pittsburgh Business Times article - Future of Health Care event focuses on keeping employees healthy

Olin College of Engineering's Stephen Hannabury Named Distinguished Business Officer of the Year by NACUBOOlin College of Engineering | July 31, 2017Stephen Hannabury of Dedham, Mass., has been named the 2017 Distinguished Business Officer of the Year by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). Steve was a key founder and leader of the innovative edHEALTH initiative, one of the country’s first group health insurance programs of its kind. It is the reason why Olin employees saw no increase in their health insurance premiums in 2014, 2015, a two-percent decrease in 2016 and no increases for many employees in 2017, as well as a “holiday” from paying last December’s medical premium.Read the article - Olin College of Engineering's Stephen Hannabury Named Distinguished Business Officer of the Year by NACUBO

Christmas Comes Early at OlinBoston GlobePRIYANKA DAYAL McCLUSKEY | December 5, 2016The faculty and staff at Olin College of Engineering are getting a rare and unexpected holiday treat this month: a break from health insurance.Olin College officials said they’ve made so much progress in curbing health care costs this year that their employees don’t have to pay any premiums in December.For 96 people who work at the small Needham college, that means extra cash they can use for holiday shopping, or anything else.Olin is one of a dozen local colleges and universities that have teamed up to cut health insurance costs. Instead of buying coverage from insurers, they formed their own insurance company, sharing the costs and risks for their combined 10,000 employees.When those employees stay fairly healthy and medical claims are low, the schools save on insurance costs.The consortium, called e...

National Association of College and University Business Officers NANCY MANN JACKSON | October 12, 2016Against the backdrop of mounting criticism over rising higher education costs, college and university business officers are looking for creative ways to cut those costs. For many, the area of escalating employee health­care prices is an ideal place to start. Across the country, several groups of higher education institutions have joined to form health insurance consortia, working together to provide benefits to their employees at a fraction of the cost they once paid individually. "With the rising costs of higher education, anything we can do to lower that cost is important," says Tracy Hassett, CEO and president of edHealth, a health insurance collaborative launched in 2013 by 11 colleges and universities in the Boston area. "And working together to provide health insurance for emplo...

College collaboration leads to self-insurance savingsWorcester Business JournalSAM BONACCI | OCTOBER 12, 2015One year ago, when Worcester Polytechnic Institute dove into the high-risk, high-reward world of self-insurance, it hoped the gamble would pay off enough to keep tuition in check. Luckily, WPI had friends. WPI joined a new collaborative of colleges and universities – called Educators Health LLC, or EdHealth– that has allowed small- to mid-sized schools to pool their self-insurance efforts and keep potential outlandish costs in check. The result over that first year was less risk and more savings.Read the article - EdHealth+WBJ.pdf