Compliance News Supplement
7-Point Checklist for Health Insurance Sales
During the heavy enrollment season and beyond, marketers in the Medicare and health insurance industry need to be on top of much more than their sales numbers.
Between the complexity of TCPA compliance and increasingly stringent CMS guidelines for marketing and communications, maintaining compliant outreach needs to be top-of-mind all year round.
Use this handy checklist to bolster your compliance support, help protect your business, and improve your sales process along the way.
1. Review the Updated CMS Guidelines for Marketers
The 2022 edition of Medicare Communications and Marketing Guidelines (MCMG) from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) is essential reading for marketing and sales teams. In addition to setting binding rules on which types of outreach are allowed, the latest MCMG specifically added independent agents, brokers, and partners like lead generators and digital marketers to its rules.
2. Conduct a Compliance Risk Assessment
With so many aspects of compliance to worry about, you need the help of experts to identify risks and devise systems for shoring up your marketing and sales practices. Enlist the help of expert counsel to assess and address areas of risk—and do so on a regular, quarterly basis to keep up with always-changing regulations.
3. Train Your Team
Compliance best practices can’t be kept as “need to know” information. The importance and impact of compliance issues need to be taught and trained at all levels of your business. Schedule regular meetings to update teams, including outbound sales agents, on changes to rules and regulations, and work with your counsel and QA teams to implement and enforce improved workflows.
4. Build a Foundation of Consent
When it comes to both CMS and TCPA compliance, consumer consent should be at the heart of everything you do, whether that’s written consent under the TCPA or permission to contact (PTC) under the CMS guidelines. Improve your compliance support, boost your lead generation and sales efforts, and empower potential customers by offering a wide variety of ways to capture consent to contact. This can include online forms, apps, web portals, recorded phone calls, text messages, inbound calls, and more.
5. Know How to Handle Revocation of Consent
Meanwhile, it’s just as important to be able to react quickly when a consumer revokes their consent to be contacted. Ensure that you can efficiently (and automatically) maintain your internal Do Not Call list and can account for reassigned phone numbers.
6. Integrate Compliance Solutions and Automation
Medicare sales and marketing compliance isn’t about expecting perfection out of your employees. After all, they’re only human. That’s why software solutions and automation in key areas of your business can play a crucial role in supporting compliance as well as agent performance. Integrate outbound contact center compliance tools like DNC scrubbing, dynamic scripting, and more to support your team’s compliance efforts.
7. Assess and Manage Your Vendors
Given the close connections between sales teams and their network of software vendors, lead partners, and more, your Medicare compliance approach is only ever as strong as the approach of those you work with. Assess your network and truly get to know the businesses you’re working with as part of your regular audits. In addition, evaluate and discuss your contract terms to ensure that you both abide by the same compliance standards—and that partners understand their liability obligations.
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DISCLAIMER: The information on this page and related links is provided for general education purposes only and is not legal advice. Convoso does not guarantee the accuracy or appropriateness of this information to your situation. You are solely responsible for using Convoso’s services in a legally compliant way and should consult your legal counsel for compliance advice. Any quotes are solely the views of the quoted person and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Convoso.
