Sommer Sherrod is a highly regarded Healthcare Strategist, Human Resources thought leader, and former Adjunct Professor. With a diverse career spanning various industries and Fortune 100 companies, Sommer has solved a myriad of Human Resources challenges. Her favorite employer challenge to solve for is Employee Benefits given the challenges and lack of transparency within the healthcare industry. She is an Employee Benefits Partner with USI Insurance and helps middle market employers take a more strategic approach to their Employee Benefits strategies through education and world-class analytics.

Sommer’s Human Resources experience, insurance carrier experience at UnitedHealthcare, and insurance broker experience combine to equip her with a deep understanding of the key aspects of the Employee Benefits equation that few others in her industry possess.

Presentation:  Since the movie, it has been proven that the collective wisdom of baseball insiders, players, managers, coaches, scouts, and front office became outdated relics. Data and analytics were necessary to change the game.

Like insurance – we used to put blind trust in the advisors around us. That has changed a lot given insurance company headlines/client education/etc.  More modern metrics were believed to be more powerful, yielding an organization to compete against a well-funded, large market team.

Today in insurance, we can measure and control so many more things that we did in the past. Before it was simply, how much is my renewal and how much can you get it down or shop for something lower. To date, professional sports teams now use predictive models and camera footage. From 10,000 data points to 10 billion data points. 18FTE’s are dedicated to data analysis for leading sports teams, with Rays having 39.

Most companies do not have dedicated analysts to analyze benefits, but your brokerage should. Companies who are self funded or in a captive can literally measure everything and have an intervention for everything. It’s gone from a contact sport to a precision sport. Takes 1-3 years to see results after investing in talent.

Like insurance, when you move to a different approach or way of addressing healthcare, it takes a few years to see the change. Use of data and analytics has resistance over the years because of CULTURE CHANGE. It’s not the way things were done in the past, and there are fears. Yes, in insurance, it’s hard for companies to pull away from the old models and approaches. Many people hang on to the old relationships and old approaches, but their companies are suffering.