By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
The sudden closure of Benefit Management Inc. (BMI) in Great Bend on Aug. 8 put several area businesses in a bind. The Great Bend school district was one of the large employers that used BMI as a third-party administrator (TPA) of its insurance plan. During Wednesday's USD 428 Board of Education Luncheon at Riley Elementary School, Assistant Superintendent John Popp announced the district has hired Freedom Claims Management as its new TPA.
"I'm actually much more at ease over this because, while they're not a large company or a large entity, they understand intimately what we are going through because they've picked up a lot of the other groups that were dropped by ValueHealth or Benefits Management," he said.
The district had met with another TPA that would have required a rewrite of the current insurance plan. Tuesday morning, the insurance committee decided to move forward with Great Bend-based Freedom Claims Management. Board President Jacquie Disque thanked Popp, Superintendent Khris Thexton, and Mike Minton for the work on the matter.
"That bankruptcy put a whole bunch of employees on edge about having insurance and if everything was going to be covered," she said. "They had providers who were not accepting their insurance because they said they did not have insurance even though they did. These guys have worked a lot over the last couple of weeks trying to get us back to where we need to be and getting our staff settled a little bit about having insurance. It's been a big deal."
Barton Community College also used BMI prior to the shutdown and also selected Freedom Claims Management as its new TPA.