RISING STAR | Kyrie Perry, HealthSource R.I., chief public affairs officer
HealthSource R.I. bucked enrollment expectations for 2018, growing paying enrollees in its individual health insurance plans by 5 percent. But more importantly, 35 percent of new customers to the state’s health insurance exchange were in the 18-34-year-old age range, the “young invincibles” that are so important to keeping the risk pool for health insurance healthy. And Chief Public Affairs Officer Kyrie Perry had no small part in that achievement.
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According to Zachary W. Sherman, director of HealthSource, the program saw more than 8,000 new enrollees for coverage in 2018, which is a 45 percent increase from the previous year.
What is especially impressive, said Sherman, is that the percentage of young invincibles among the new enrollees grew from 25 percent in 2017 to 35 percent this year.
“This increase in younger customers marks a big win for HealthSource RI and the stability of Rhode Island’s individual market overall,” Sherman wrote in his C-Suite nomination of Perry, since the age bracket generally requires fewer services, allowing their membership to help pay for older, more frequent users of health services.
Perry understands the mindset of the young invincibles instinctively, seeing as she is 26 herself.
Perry formerly worked at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island as a public-relations specialist. Before that, she was a communications associate in the office of former Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee. She is a graduate of Roger Williams University in Bristol and active in the community.
For instance, she is professional-development chair with the United Way of Rhode Island Young Leaders Circle, helping with collaborative volunteer projects and with professional development in the community.
No doubt her connections there, as well as mentoring she does with RWU students, played into her success in bringing younger enrollees to HealthSource.
When Perry arrived at the exchange in fall 2016, open enrollment was just starting. The organization already had quite a bit of collateral materials it had produced, Perry said.
“When I first said I wanted to overhaul collateral, people were a bit surprised … but then everyone was excited,” she said.
She also led modifications to the marketing schedule, which usually ramps up just before annual open enrollment. Perry launched a brand-awareness campaign a month earlier, “We Work for You,” profiling actual HealthSource team members. The goal, said Sherman, was to add a more-human element and regain trust following a previous period of less-than-exceptional customer service.
“We added new pages to the website, a new color palette, online support tools, research to back up our messaging, and added texting services to communicate with members,” said Perry. “We did quite an overhaul to the look and feel of the marketing and targeted the minority population with the most uninsured.”
Those efforts began with fundamental changes in the department’s approach.
“We have more acronyms than anywhere else,” Perry said of health care insurance. “But when you stop and get to the core message, you can be more simplistic. … One of the reasons for our open-enrollment awareness campaign was because people weren’t even sure if [the Affordable Care Act] was here for them,” with President Donald Trump’s administration taking the reins in the White House, she said.
Perry is out to connect residents with information that empowers them to make healthy choices at the same time she and her colleagues keep an eye on a fluctuating industry.
Establishing relationships with stakeholders is one way to address potential changes down the road, Perry said, along with exploring what can be done on a state level, because the effects of the federal tax overhaul may create a situation in which HealthSource pivots again.
“All signs indicate that premiums will go up,” said Perry, producing more uninsured, a setback to her organization’s goal. “We may have to change our messaging, depending on where we land.”
