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Managing Director
National Health Care Alternative Risk Practice
Aon
Philadelphia

During 20 years with Aon, Dominic Colaizzo co-founded the Philadelphia regional health-care practice and founded the National Health Care Alternative Risk Practice. But that isn't what puts him here. What does is true innovation.

His most impressive success of last year came on behalf of a health system with a major problem--it was bankrupt.

"Dom is a very smart man," the system's risk manager says about Colaizzo, his "problem-solver" with whom he brainstorms for at least one good idea a day.

Colaizzo's good idea that day was to wrestle back a "heavy letter of credit" from a former fronting insurer and, according to the executive, help to open a new captive in the system's home state. It is only the second hospital to do so--and the first time it was done by a bankrupt hospital. On top of this, Colaizzo had only 15 days to renew the system's coverage--which he did at a lower cost.

For another client--a medical school in "a judicial hell hole" of a city, as the school's general counsel attests--Colaizzo helped develop a risk management program that landed coverage that's well below typical costs for an academic medical school--in any city. Such success has led the general counsel to request Colaizzo to take more of a commission.

Senior Vice President
Willis
Nashville, Tenn.

"We've had some tough times," says a Greg Peterson client, a risk management executive at one of the nation's biggest hospital systems. Through it all, the risk manager says, Peterson was there.

With more than 25 years of brokering experience, Peterson was able to secure mammoth limits needed by the system, though it required a new lineup of reinsurers to back the company's captive.

For a large international health-care provider, Peterson sculpted more reinsurance alternative risk transfer this past year. He convinced reinsurers that the company was a good risk and allowed its captive to increase its limits and potentially save 60 percent on premium from a year ago.

Just the sheer numbers of Peterson's hospital portfolio are impressive--more than 28,000 doctors and about 400 hospitals. Peterson is also quick to thank, his colleagues in Bermuda and London who helped him manage this load.

But Peterson's success is his own doing, best explained by another client, an executive at a professional-liability carrier.

"Greg puts his clients' needs first," he says. "Greg has been very creative in developing solutions that bridge the gap between market requirements and client needs, resulting in successful partnerships that have withstood the test of time."

Managing Principal
Integro
Chicago

In his 21 years in the world of health-care liability, Gregory Suffield has taken the road that several other brokers have traveled lately. After a spell on the underwriting side of the business, he made his way from Johnson & Higgins to Marsh, and from Marsh now to Integro. This upstart house, with the recent acquisition of most of Marsh's Boston office, is poised to be a leader for health care.

What sets Suffield apart among the Integro crowd, though, is that he has landed new accounts since switching teams. Big accounts. Some of the biggest institutional health-care systems in the country.

"He wasn't servicing those accounts before," says one knowledgeable insider in the health-care liability universe, "so he was able to market some serious business."

Suffield's clients can explain why. One, at a top-10 academic medical center, mentions how she personally requested that Suffield take the lead on her account in the past year. She praises his creativity, which she attributes to his background in global brokering.

That is exactly what sets Suffield apart, says another new client, who adds that he went with Suffield and colleagues despite knowing "full well they are former Marsh people."

Unlike most brokers, Suffield is not "necessarily tied to a single market or a single marketplace," this client says. From markets stateside to London, the Continent and Bermuda--Suffield has a "strong relationship with the entire global marketplace."

Managing Director
Marsh
Detroit

Jack Jensen is holding down the fort in Detroit. Despite Integro's move into Boston, Marsh is still big in health care thanks to the reputation and talent of its leaders, such as Jensen. Jensen is now the "brain trust," as a client puts it, of one of health care's "premier" teams.

He focuses his attention on acute care in not-for-profits, as well as in setting up so-called "physician channeling" alternative risk transfer programs, also called "voluntary attending programs."

But Jensen can't be pigeonholed. "He is on top of all the issues," says another client, a vice president at a nonprofit health provider, adding that Jensen can predict where worldwide markets are headed. "He knows the global market," he continues, adding that the "straight shooter" Jensen provides "strategies that bridge both sides of the ocean."

It is Jensen's deep knowledge and his extensive relationships that explain why many Michigan institutions entrust their excess liability coverage to him. Jensen, according to one institution's president, is the strategic thinker behind the Caymish Insurance Co., a group captive managed by Marsh.

This past year, Jensen helped to land it a competitively priced renewal thanks to a "pretty innovative" new structure, and the "deft" touch to sell the entire ownership group on it, says the client.

President
Healthcare Insurance Services
Arthur J. Gallagher
Houston

Phil Reischman is the only Health Care Power Broker^TM from last year's winners to earn the distinction again. It's not because the other five brokers from last year don't deserve their due again--it's more that Reischman's name gets mentioned by health-care executives so much it's difficult to avoid the man.

It helps that superlatives always accompany it. A respected vice president of risk at a health-care provider says that Reischman is still the "best negotiator" out there. Another risk manager, an executive director at an academic medical center, calls Reischman the "strongest broker on professional liability"--the "Peyton Manning" of health-care brokers.

One current client, a vice president of corporate risk management at a top pharmaceutical services provider, calls Reischman the "mastermind" of his program. The risk manager says his business is, at the moment, enjoying a "calm lake," in large part thanks to Reischman sticking with him through the difficulties of the last decade--through the setup of multiple tails of more than $100 million, the initiation of their self-insurance program and the company's financial difficulties. And he says that Reischman has a "great pulse on the market" and knows what's going on "behind the walls" of the insurance companies.

Managing Director
Marsh
Detroit

Ruth Goodell is No. 1 on many people's lists for professional liability and captives, and, supposedly, also high on the list of her boss, Jack Jensen. As one captive expert puts it, Jensen sends in Goodell whenever there's tough work. No wonder Goodell works double-time out of Detroit. She's both regional captive development leader and a client executive for several health systems.

Last year alone, she helped a university health system land all lines of coverage, transitioned a hospital system into a group excess program and set up a captive for a small county hospital. When Integro swallowed up the old Johnson & Higgins Boston office, Goodell was a reason, says the captive expert, that a major New England medical center stuck with Marsh.

"She makes the clients as good as they can be," says another captive expert. The word he uses to describe how she treats clients is "nurturing." One health-care vice president says about Goodell's affable nature, "We always hug."

But hugs and dinners aren't top selling points for astute clients. What they really want is knowledge and results. Goodell delivers. It is no coincidence that the touchy-feely executive above also says of Goodell: "Ruth stands out with respect to the knowledge she has." There is no captive or medical-malpractice question that he could pose that she wouldn't know the answer for. Another client simply says, "She gets it done."