Chair Talk

March 2017

OPTUM Rx

Bethany Beauchine (Employee Benefits Director) attended the SERA Coordinating Council on March 3, 2017. Bethany spoke to the group about the transition from MedImpact to Optum Rx and the issues involved in the move. The number of OPTUM Rx issues that EBD had to get involved with since January 1 were about 360. Bethany informed us that there were about 65 issues still being dealt with. The issues that I am hearing about have slowed down considerably. Bethany said that the number of various Rx issues since January 1st were about the same as previous Rx transitions.

I have been involved with 4 or 5 Rx transitions during my tenure as Chair of the SERA CC. The Rx issues I have been made aware of are no more (or less) than the past transitions. Whenever there is a transition from one Rx provider to another there will be issues. Optum Rx has filled close to 200,000 prescriptions since January 1 with less than 400 issues. That ratio indicates that the transition was pretty good. I spoke to Justin Hinkley (Lansing State Journal reporter) on Wednesday and informed him of the same thing.

SERA-PLUS (HANTZ GROUP)

Since 1/1/15, the Hantz group has recruited over 1700 new members for the various SERA Chapters. It’s our job as Chapter leaders to retain these new and current members. We can retain our members by providing interesting membership meetings. We must provide our members with up-to-date information on topics that are valuable to them as retirees/seniors. Many of the Chapters invite speakers from BC/BS, Delta Dental, Employee Benefits, and Retirement Services etc. You have to make your membership meetings informative and valuable to your members in order to retain them.

The August CC meeting will be hosted by the Hantz Group at the the Hantz Golf Club in Tecumseh, Michigan. More information about the location and other details become available we will pass them on.

We are in the process of entering information into the SERA statewide database. The information we need from Chapters are current membership lists and the lists of members that have not renewed (send those lists to Dave Cook). We will have a training/informational meeting for Chapter Presidents/representatives in a couple of months. We hope to have the database up and available sometime this summer.

Editor’s note: Bob Kopasz is Chair of the Michigan SERA Council. He may be reached at P.O. Box 692, Mt. Morris, MI 48458; phone 810/240-8380.