Optimize Your Medical Partnerships

A college athletic department has many responsibilities to its school and its programs, but when all is said and done, it ultimately has two main priorities: winning games and providing the best experience for its student-athletes. In this NACDA video sponsored by A-G Specialty Insurance, a panel of intercollegiate athletic department and provider experts discuss how both of these priorities can be achieved by optimizing medical partnerships.

Developed as part of NACDA’s webinar series and hosted by NACDA member and Allen Americans, ECHL President and Alternate Governor Mike Waddell, the panel includes

• St. Joseph’s University Director of Athletics, Jill Bodensteiner
• A-G Specialty Insurance Chief Executive Officer, Dixon Gillis
• Fairly Group President, Alex Fairly
• Retired Medstar Sports Health Vice President, Lew Lyon
• The University of Oregon’s Deputy Athletics Director and Chief Operating Officer, Eric Roedl

This lineup delivers powerful insights into how the relationship between providers and athletic departments can improve multiple areas—not just athletics—while advancing the institution’s academic mission and business resources through their partnerships.

Partnerships Should Be A Win-Win For Everyone

During the session, Gillis talks about the role A-G plays at the intersection of clinical care and financial consequences because of our transactional, cost containment, and oversight responsibilities as providers of student-athlete medical expense insurance. Student-athlete health and wellness are A-G’s critical priorities, as is making sure providers get paid.

Additionally, A-G provides data back to key stakeholders so that the impact of medical expenses on the bottom line is clearly understood. And that’s important with intercollegiate sports injury costs estimated to range from $400 million to $1.5 billion a year.

Other topics discussed include:

• What do providers look for when entertaining partnerships?
• What do college athletic departments look for in a partnership?
• What can an enterprise-wide view of the athletic programs, partnerships, and goals reveal?
• Are partnerships opportunities to cover new student-athlete needs such as mental health issues?
• Do politics play a role in partnership outreach?
• Do partnerships affect marketing dollars, donors, alums, and philanthropy?
• Do partnerships help in recruiting student-athletes?
• How does having an in-house physician impact relationships with external providers?
• And more

Not surprisingly, good customer service is also deemed critical to a partnership’s success.

Maximize The Relationship Between Providers And Athletic Departments

Watching the webinar, you’ll be excited to see how people at the highest levels in college sports and healthcare are looking for the best solutions for program success, student-athlete safety, and wellness. Optimizing medical partnerships play an essential role in all areas. By providing medical expense coverage, claims management, and cost containment measures, A-G helps play a critical role in maximizing your athletic department’s partnerships to their full potential.

Make sure to watch the video and find out more. Then, if you’d like to find out how A-G can help your school’s athletic department, we’d love to talk. Just let us know here. We look forward to talking about how you could start optimizing your program soon.