June 25, 2007
Former NFL player brings grid iron flair to FCHP
By Christina Davis
Helps lead HMOs charge to Western Mass.
Football, with its beefy players and hard-hitting action seems to be the polar opposite of the staid and quiet insurance industry.
But the two have a lot more in common than might appear at first blush, according to former NFL player Patrick Hughes, the new senior vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at Worcester-based HMO Fallon Community Health Plan.
"The obvious parallel is the whole concept and idea of team," said Hughes, adding that on the football field, "You can't be successful unless everyone is going in the same direction toward a similar goal and objective. In business it's the same kind of application."
Team spirit
And Hughes should know what it takes to make a good team. He spent 10 years as a linebacker, seven with the New York Giants and three with the New Orleans Saints.
Hughes also sees parallels between his former title of linebacker and his current one. As a linebacker, he said, he was expected to "bridge the gap" between the team's running game and passing game. Now, in sales management he has to "bridge the gap" between different aspects of the company's business in order to attain success.
"Sales management is similar in many respects because you're trying to pull together all aspects of the business. If we're to be successful, I can't be successful in a vacuum. The whole is always greater than the sum of all its parts," he said.
Hughes - who earned a teaching degree from Boston University - made the jump to insurance after retiring from the NFL in 1980. His career includes stints at Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. As senior vice president of sales, marketing and product development at Blue Cross, he helped the company grow its revenues by $750 million and increase membership by 425,000.
No doubt, FCHP is hoping Hughes might help do the same in his new position. And while there isn't a clearly delineated end zone, there is a goal for FCHP: grow its presence beyond Central Massachusetts into the Western part of the state.
In the latter part of 2006, Hughes said FCHP took its first footsteps into Western Massachusetts, and now the company hopes to increase steam in adding members in that part of the state.
"Western Massachusetts, and the Springfield area in particular, looks and feels much like Central Massachusetts," he said. "I think we truly are cousins as far as it's concerned."
So far, Hughes said FCHP has experienced "great receptivity" in that end of the commonwealth, and that the company has "written a nice amount of business."
As of March 31, FCHP had about 153,000 members in Massachusetts, according to a report from the state Division of Insurance. Of those, more than 80 percent - or 126,000 - are based in Worcester County, while only 1,300 members are in Hampden County, where Springfield is located, and only a handful are in Berkshire County.
"We're looking to expand our influence down there," he said. "We're finishing and credentialing our network further out into the Berkshires."
While Hughes has spent a good part of his career within larges companies, most recently he was more of a free agent.
After leaving Blue Cross, Hughes started his own company, W.P. Hughes & Co., an insurance brokerage and consulting firm based in Portsmouth, N.H. It was in his role as a consultant that Hughes was first introduced to FCHP. He helped the nonprofit HMO develop and execute its acquisition strategy. In late 2006, the topic of his joining the company was broached, and he had his first day as a full-time employee on Feb. 1 of this year.
Time for accountability
Since he entered the insurance industry in the 1980s, Hughes said he's seen the industry evolve in a circle. When he first began his career, comprehensive major medical was the standard. Over time, the insurance industry moved toward managed care, but today it's getting back to major medical with high-deductible plans becoming more popular.
With the time he's spent working in insurance, Hughes knows what won't succeed in curbing health care costs.
"The products ultimately won't solve the problem, because we've tried all those things," he said. In the end, he said the way to curb costs is for there to be real accountability for people and the choices they make.
"We are all part of the problem, but we're all part of the solution," he said.
Hughes also pointed to tort reform - which some argue would cut down on the number of malpractice lawsuits - as an important step toward curbing health care costs.
The other problem facing insurers is that too many people just don't take the time to think about their heath insurance, according to Hughes.
In particular, the challenge is to convince younger uninsured workers that it's more worthwhile to spend $180 a month on insurance rather than a car payment and a case of beer, he said. But with the new health care reform law requiring insurance of all Massachusetts residents that challenge may be getting a little bit easier.
Hughes also expects that in the not-too-distant future defined-contribution health plans will go the way of the dodo.
"That's a huge paradigm shift," he said.
While it's easy to get Hughes to talk about insurance, he never gets too far away from his roots on the football field.
"You may argue my politics, but you can't argue at the end of the day with the results, either they're up or they're down and you need to be held accountable to that...It's about winning," he said.
Football, with its beefy players and hard-hitting action seems to be the polar opposite of the staid and quiet insurance industry.
But the two have a lot more in common than might appear at first blush, according to former NFL player Patrick Hughes, the new senior vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at Worcester-based HMO Fallon Community Health Plan.
"The obvious parallel is the whole concept and idea of team," said Hughes, adding that on the football field, "You can't be successful unless everyone is going in the same direction toward a similar goal and objective. In business it's the same kind of application."
Team spirit
And Hughes should know what it takes to make a good team. He spent 10 years as a linebacker, seven with the New York Giants and three with the New Orleans Saints.
Hughes also sees parallels between his former title of linebacker and his current one. As a linebacker, he said, he was expected to "bridge the gap" between the team's running game and passing game. Now, in sales management he has to "bridge the gap" between different aspects of the company's business in order to attain success.
"Sales management is similar in many respects because you're trying to pull together all aspects of the business. If we're to be successful, I can't be successful in a vacuum. The whole is always greater than the sum of all its parts," he said.
Hughes - who earned a teaching degree from Boston University - made the jump to insurance after retiring from the NFL in 1980. His career includes stints at Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. As senior vice president of sales, marketing and product development at Blue Cross, he helped the company grow its revenues by $750 million and increase membership by 425,000.
No doubt, FCHP is hoping Hughes might help do the same in his new position. And while there isn't a clearly delineated end zone, there is a goal for FCHP: grow its presence beyond Central Massachusetts into the Western part of the state.
In the latter part of 2006, Hughes said FCHP took its first footsteps into Western Massachusetts, and now the company hopes to increase steam in adding members in that part of the state.
"Western Massachusetts, and the Springfield area in particular, looks and feels much like Central Massachusetts," he said. "I think we truly are cousins as far as it's concerned."
Patrick Hughes
As of March 31, FCHP had about 153,000 members in Massachusetts, according to a report from the state Division of Insurance. Of those, more than 80 percent - or 126,000 - are based in Worcester County, while only 1,300 members are in Hampden County, where Springfield is located, and only a handful are in Berkshire County.
"We're looking to expand our influence down there," he said. "We're finishing and credentialing our network further out into the Berkshires."
While Hughes has spent a good part of his career within larges companies, most recently he was more of a free agent.
After leaving Blue Cross, Hughes started his own company, W.P. Hughes & Co., an insurance brokerage and consulting firm based in Portsmouth, N.H. It was in his role as a consultant that Hughes was first introduced to FCHP. He helped the nonprofit HMO develop and execute its acquisition strategy. In late 2006, the topic of his joining the company was broached, and he had his first day as a full-time employee on Feb. 1 of this year.
Time for accountability
Since he entered the insurance industry in the 1980s, Hughes said he's seen the industry evolve in a circle. When he first began his career, comprehensive major medical was the standard. Over time, the insurance industry moved toward managed care, but today it's getting back to major medical with high-deductible plans becoming more popular.
With the time he's spent working in insurance, Hughes knows what won't succeed in curbing health care costs.
"The products ultimately won't solve the problem, because we've tried all those things," he said. In the end, he said the way to curb costs is for there to be real accountability for people and the choices they make.
"We are all part of the problem, but we're all part of the solution," he said.
Hughes also pointed to tort reform - which some argue would cut down on the number of malpractice lawsuits - as an important step toward curbing health care costs.
The other problem facing insurers is that too many people just don't take the time to think about their heath insurance, according to Hughes.
In particular, the challenge is to convince younger uninsured workers that it's more worthwhile to spend $180 a month on insurance rather than a car payment and a case of beer, he said. But with the new health care reform law requiring insurance of all Massachusetts residents that challenge may be getting a little bit easier.
Hughes also expects that in the not-too-distant future defined-contribution health plans will go the way of the dodo.
"That's a huge paradigm shift," he said.
While it's easy to get Hughes to talk about insurance, he never gets too far away from his roots on the football field.
"You may argue my politics, but you can't argue at the end of the day with the results, either they're up or they're down and you need to be held accountable to that...It's about winning," he said.
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