COVID-19 Measure: Read Full Magazine Here. In an exclusive interview, BUSINESS LIFE reporter was eager to know more about TPA and the leading operations of GlobeMed in various territories from the renowned expert, Salem Haidar, the Regional Vice President of GlobeMed Group.
Salem Haidar is the Regional Vice President of GlobeMed Group since January 2014 overseeing the territories of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and heading the Project for Oman entry. He also assumes the positions of General Manager of GlobeMed Kuwait and General Manager of GlobeMed Qatar since 2009. Before serving as GM to both operations, Salem spent 3 years as Regional Manager for Kuwait & Qatar starting 2006. He joined GlobeMed Lebanon, previously known as MedNet Liban, back in 2003 as Network &Tariffs Manager after 13 years of experience as a Hospital Director in Lebanon.
Salem Haidar has accrued 30 years of experience in healthcare management in the Middle East and the Gulf region with multi-disciplinary exposures. He gained extensive experience working in both Hospital management and healthcare benefits management companies (TPA). His area of expertise covers executive management, strategic and business planning, health insurance and product development, health benefits management, and hospital administration.
Salem was the responsible figure for the set-up and launch of GlobeMed operations in Kuwait and Qatar. Under his leadership, these operations achieved leading market positions. Salem also assists GlobeMed’s Group CEO in different projects across the Gulf region territories.
BL: GlobeMed has been a leader in the TPA industry; how did GlobeMed succeeded in sustaining its leadership position in various markets?
Salem Haidar: GlobeMed has been the leading healthcare benefits management company (TPA) in the region for nearly three decades now. Since its early beginnings in Lebanon, it has offered a professional and unique TPA model in the country to serve health insurance market needs. At that time, the concept of third-party administration was still new in the region. GlobeMed expanded its geographical presence to 12 countries in the MENA region to serve clients and their insured members wherever they might be.
Throughout the past 30 years, GlobeMed worked with different stakeholders to introduce professional actuarial practices, develop know how in respect to product design, underwriting, etc. The Group's visionary strategy has allowed us to achieve several milestones. Since 1999 when GlobeMed launched the first online portal for healthcare providers to process claims,we have introduced many market firsts, including individual and family programs with Guaranteed Renewability (GR) in Lebanon, which have eventually became standard market practices later on.
Our model has also allowed us to connect our various stakeholders including client insurers, healthcare providers, and insured members. Indeed, this has revolutionized the overall healthcare experience rendering a seamless process in health services delivery for patients.
It is no secret that achieving success is hard but sustaining it is harder. Success isn’t just what you have, or what you’ve accomplished; it also means that you need to continually push new boundaries. GlobeMed has done just that over the past 3 decades, pushing the boundaries of the health insurance industry in various markets where it operates with new innovations while adapting to clients and members ever-changing needs.
Three main factors underpin our success: people, process, and technology. Our workforce includes a team of certified professionals in various fields including actuaries, coding, medical, etc. At GlobeMed, we support robust professional education and training strategies to meet the challenges of fostering strong, sustainable and balanced growth in each market where we operate.
In respect to processes and technologies, GlobeMed has embraced new digital technologies in support of automation which constitutes the core of our work. We also thrive in adapting our processes and tools to meet market needs as the TPA business has evolved from the traditional claims processing to managing healthcare benefits and managed care.
BL: What differentiates GlobeMed from other TPAs in the region?
Salem Haidar: It is our strategy and focus on providing insured members with exceptional customer experience through offering them services that meet their personal health insurance needs. We are a patient-centric organization. As a health care benefits management company, we realize the importance of supporting insured members particularly when they need us the most, when they are sick or outside their country of residence requesting access to health services. In this respect, we have launched GlobeMed’s Automated Cross Border Service in 2012. This has revolutionized the healthcare benefits industry by giving insured members hassle-free access to a network exceeding 20,250 healthcare providers in all the countries where GlobeMed operates.
While abroad, the requested medical services are provided upon the simple presentation of the insurance card. No forms, no phone calls and no cash payments are even required.
GlobeMed was among the first companies to introduce web enabled connections with healthcare providers and is a leading expert in medical coding. These two elements combined to allow GlobeMed to build a unique expert system which facilitates the process of issuing coverage decisions and pre-authorization electronically and thus medical services are rendered quickly, efficiently and without any hassle.
We also differentiate ourselves by being by the side of insured members at every customer touch point. We carefully consider the entire customer experience to better serve our clients and their insured members. Our field agents assist members in facilitating the admission approval process as well as coordinating access to services with providers, resolving any on-the-spot issues & complaints, answering all enquiries related to insurance policy and services. Our customer care teams are always ready to assist insured members and ensure timely delivery of services for a smooth patient experience at the healthcare provider facility.
We also employ state-of the-art Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to respond to queries and resolve any issue raised by clients, insured members and healthcare providers through several communication channels, including phone, email, fax, and website.
We also launched our redesigned GlobeMed Fit mobile app which offers an improved self-service health insurance and wellness management tool. GlobeMed Fit is bringing exciting new features to make insurance simpler. Insured members can now manage their health insurance and the insurance of their family members from the safety of their homes. It empowers them with a new e-card feature for instant eligibility check at healthcare providers without using their physical card. In addition to the current functionalities which include claims submission and tracking, locating the nearest healthcare provider, accessing policy details and other features. Furthermore, GlobeMed FIT supports users to reach their weight goals and achieve results, by generating daily fitness and nutritional goals. It allows them to monitor their daily calorie intake and retrieve their food nutritional values while keeping track of their fitness activities. The app allows users to save their medical test and medications and set pill reminders.
We also offer a comprehensive Care Management (CM) program. It is a patient-centered care management program for insured members with chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypertension & cardiovascular diseases. The program was rolled out in Lebanon in 2018 targeting diabetic patients with the goal of improving their health and wellbeing, reducing hospitalization rates, and lowering treatment costs. We plan to roll out the same gradually in the Gulf region.
Members receive ongoing, disease-specific coaching to maximize their ability to care for themselves and the program has already achieved several success stories helping insured members with improved quality of life, minimized complications and reduced hospital admissions, hence decreasing the cost of care.
BL: How did COVID19 affect your business particularly in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain? And how do you plan to lead your business in a post pandemic world?
Salem Haidar: COVID-19 has taken over all aspects of our lives. The virus has evolved to become a global pandemic that has took millions of lives worldwide, has brought countries to a standstill, pushed hospital systems in many countries to the brink and dragged the global economy into a recession.
As the lockdowns or stay at-home measures entered into force in many countries, GlobeMed was ready to move its workforce during this critical period to working remotely. All GlobeMed operations in the region are highly digitalized and enjoy a very significant level of digital integration with our client insurers and healthcare providers. This has enabled us to continue to serve our clients and their insured members without any interruption while our employees continued to work from the safety of their homes. Of course upon return to work, we have applied strict safety measures such as wearing face masks, maintaining social distancing, and washing hands frequently. This has allowed us to keep our employees safe as well as the societies in which we operate. Indeed, our effective business continuity measures have passed the test of COVID19 with flying colors.
As the world moves slowly towards recovery from covid19, we will focus on programs that better serve insured members with emphasis on digital services such as telehealth programs.
We will also enhance our direct communications with the insured members, particularly in respect to patient education, with focus on wellness and the importance of living a healthy life. Of course our advanced mobile app, GlobeMed Fit, will address members’ health insurance needs and inquiries, as well as their health needs with abundance of information provided at their fingertips.
We will focus our attention on operational transformation by sharpening the skills of our teams, and developing new business concepts and models to contend with new social and economic realities.
BL: Innovation is part of GlobeMed fabric since its early beginnings, what can you tell us about the latest innovations the organization is working on?
Salem Haidar: I would describe GlobeMed as a beehive continuously working on new innovations to reinvent the way we do business and the way our stakeholders do theirs. GlobeMed’s new health insurance system is one of our remarkable innovations. It is an outstanding solution with groundbreaking technologies. The capabilities and features of our new health insurance system are enabled by a new architecture supported by extraordinary technology, a technology and architecture that took so many years to develop. It is built on our experiences and our know-how accumulated over the past three decades. It is built on major pillars including integration, automation, modularity, customization and data driven. Integration will enable us to communicate and cooperate with users at different touch points to reach a wider span of the customer journey. Automation will allow us to eliminate waste and manual processes to streamline the customer experience. Modularity will enable the organization to leverage new technologies. Customization will facilitate the delivery of a personalized experience to each one of our customers. Last but not least, data will empower us to better understand our customers and their needs. Our system is designed to support each and every user from our 230+ clients, 22,000+ healthcare providers, and millions of insured members.
BL: With new technologies come huge opportunities as well as challenges, particularly when it comes to data security and privacy? How do you tackle this issue in your new innovations?
Salem Haidar: Data security, privacy and quality are central components of every innovation. Over the years, we have gained our customers trust through a strong data protection strategy. And today we continue to differentiate ourselves through a reputation for strong data privacy and security practices. From encryption to traceability, audit trails, access levels and controls, we have implemented all the necessary tools not only to meet but also exceed the expectations of our customers.
BL: GlobeMed portfolio currently includes 12 markets. Are you planning on adding new markets to your portfolio?
Salem Haidar: Entering new markets is a cornerstone in our business strategy. We are always keen to expand to new markets and discover new business opportunities. However, when expanding to new markets we take into consideration two major factors, first how the new market will complement the services reach to our existing markets. Second how we can create value to our existing clients by offering them the advantage of being in multiple locations and following similar processes, services, and visibility.
Our plans are already set to expand to the Sultanate of Oman in anticipation of the launching of the new mandatory health scheme. Several of our existing clients are already present there. However the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic has halted our plans during the past period but we will be moving forward very soon with the world gradually recovering from the pandemic.
