History |
| In the late 1980’s
COBRA administration was a new industry with few outsourcing
options. Many plan sponsors saw COBRA administration as a low
priority “necessary evil”. Outsource organizations
offering the service at all usually did so as an “add
on” to “important” services like claims or
flex plan administration. As a result, few resources were devoted
to this area and plan sponsors faced growing costs, hassle and
legal exposure
Learning from these mistakes we concluded that an organization
with COBRA administration as it’s primary service was
the only viable approach. The Taben Group was founded in August
of 1990 to provide high quality, “stand alone”
COBRA services to plan sponsors.
From the beginning we believed that employers would prefer
a professional, well run COBRA administrator to the bureaucratic,
high turn over, low resource operations offered by others.
In order to build such an organization we established seven
key principals: |
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Know the business first
Our founder had been consulting to plan sponsors with
COBRA responsibilities since the law had been written. Our co-founder
actually spent three years setting up and running the COBRA
division of a large regional claims administrator.
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Be the solution
Even when it is not our fault, one phone call to our
client from a COBRA participant is one too many.
We knew that after COBRA payments were processed the system
often still bogged down in the “eligibility department”
of claims processors. This required time and effort from plan
sponsors to resolve. We made it a part of our culture to motivate
insurance companies, claim TPA’s and RX vendors to do
a better job with their part of COBRA administration. Our staff
learned to pride themselves on solving problems “outside”
The Taben Group.
We also understood that COBRA participants are often confused
and unhappy about the cost of COBRA, the circumstances under
which they left employment. or the “run-around”
they may have gotten from other vendors. Our staff was trained
to be “the calm amidst the storm” and to make COBRA
participants feel that The Taben Group was the place to call
to solve their problems.
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Invest in People
Pay your associates well and treat them better. Create a work
environment that makes people want to excell.
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Embrace Technology
our first capital expenditure was for high speed hardware and
a dedicated data base system from the industry leader in COBRA
administration software. We took this step at a time when most
administrators were using "off the shelf" word processing and
spreadsheet software or even administrating COBRA by hand.
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Take a Long Term
view
The Taben Group was well capitalized from inception and has
never used significant debt to finance operations. This allowed
us to concentrate on creating quality from the beginning without
the need to cut corners or “buy” new business. Most
profits have been left in the company to create contingency
reserves or to fund new equipment and staff.
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Controlled Growth
With our background in the industry we were very aware
of the pitfalls of too rapid growth. Adopting the "grow or die"
philosophy common in the 1980's, many vendors quickly became
bureaucratic, inflexible, and expensive.
To avoid this we adopted a policy of never bringing on new clients
until we had the staff and systems in place to accommodate them.
By plowing profits back into systems and staff we would systematically
maintain excess capacity with out excessive debt. This way new
and existing clients would always get the support they are entitled
to.
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Go beyond the minimum
legal requirements
The greatest financial risk to our clients is that of being
forced to pay a large health claim for an ex-employee because
the COBRA rules were not followed. To protect our clients we
put in place an automated system of “overkill” that
documents virtually every step of the COBRA process even when
the law does not require that we do so. Our software vendor
agreed to automatically upgrading this system each and every
time the COBRA law changed.
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Following these 7 principals
allowed us to build an organization that today services many
of the largest and most respected plan sponsors in the country.
While our growth in the early years was slower than some competitors,
we have been able to retain virtually every client we contracted
with over the years. In fact, the only clients we have ever
lost have been through merger or acquisition.
Today The Taben Group is a well-respected, national administrator
serving a growing list of plan sponsors. COBRA/HIPAA and Retiree
administration is still our only business. We have
a depth of experienced staff and leading edge technology that
allows us to provide world class COBRA / Retiree services. |
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CORBA/HIPAA
Quick Guide