Supercharge your business.

Control your future.

Join the industry mavericks who are disrupting healthcare
Learn to become a NextGen Adviser

Hone your NextGen Skillset

January 16-19, 2024 | Marriott Marquis, Atlanta

SUPERCHARGE YOUR BUSINESS.
CONTROL YOUR FUTURE.

Join the industry mavericks who are disrupting healthcare
Learn to become a NextGen Adviser

Hone your NextGen Skillset

January 16-19, 2024 MArriott Marquis, Atlanta

Do You Struggle With…

  • Differentiating yourself in the marketplace?
  • Increasing your book of business?
  • Learning the tools and skills to create self funded strategies?
  • Creating significant savings for your clients?

Complete the form to request more information:

Why Attend ASCEND

Ascend is the industry's premier equipping conference for

NextGen Benefits strategies.

  • Empower employers to take control of their health plan
  • Improve the quality of healthcare
  • Reduce the cost of care by $2,000 or more per employee per year
  • Lower or even eliminate employee out-of-pocket expenses
  • Win bigger, mid market groups
  • Take business from bigger - even national - brokers

Look At Our Results

NextGen Benefit Strategies produces results for employers and brokers.

TOOLSET I SKILLSET I MINDSET

The tools you need to succeed

TOOLSET

The NextGen TOOLSET includes

  • Self-funding strategies and techniques
  • Cost containment tools to manage the healthcare supply change
  • NextGen solution providers who do the work of cost containment
  • NextGen plan docs and consulting agreements

SKILLSET

More challenging is the NextGen SKILLSET, which includes

  • How to implement a self-funded plan and manage the supply chain
  • Consultative selling skills
  • The ability to get into the C-Suite
  • Being able to speak the language of the C-Suite
  • Most important, the skills needed to have an effective financial & strategic conversation with the CEO and/or CFO

MINDSET

The NextGen MINDSET requires moving from...

  • Thinking you're in insurance...
  • to understanding you're in healthcare
  • A transactional broker mindset...
  • to a consultative adviser mindset
  • Thinking yourplace is in HR...
  • to knowing you belong in the     C-Suite
  • Knowing you can't help your client...
  • to knowing you can improve the quality of healthcare while lowering the costs

What NextGen Advisers say about their

ASCEND experience

Ashley Hughes

Swift Kennedy and Associates

Chris Wolpert

GBS Consulting

Dan LaBroad

Ovation

Are you ready for the success these NextGen advisers are having?

Many of the nation’s most recognized & honored advisers have attended ASCEND

What you will take home

Over 170 pages. Five expertly curated sections.

Packed with actionable insights, strategies, tactics & tools.

RETURN TO THE OFFICE PREPARED

The 117-page NextGen Benefits Field Manual
“Crawl, Walk, Run, Soar Guide” to implementing NextGen Benefits

Proven NextGen Benefits strategies & solutions

  • Improve the quality of health care
  • Control & reduce the cost of care
  • Eliminate employee out-of-pocket expenses (No more deductibles or co-insurance)
  • C-Suite language & and the NextGen Talk Track
  • Marketing strategies that create warm C-Suite leads
  • Sales strategies that close the C-Suite

Discover how to...

  • Transition from broker to consultative advise
  • Pivot easily from HR to the C-Suite
  • Gain direct access to the C-Suite
  • Speak C-Suite, the language of the CEO & CFO
  • Obtain claims data (even under 100 lives)
  • Move the client to self-funding
  • Implement NextGen cost-containment strategies

2024 Sponsors

SPEAKERS

Nelson Griswold

Founder & President, NextGen Benefits

Eric Barker

RPh, Chief Growth Officer, TrueRx

Ben Conner

President & CEO, Conner Insurance

Matt Ohrt

Co-Founder,
 Merrill Steel

David Rainbolt

Executive Chairman, BancFirst Corporation

Wendell Potter

President, Center for Health & Democracy

Cristin Dickerson

CEO, Green Imaging

Dan LaBroad

CEO, Ovation Health & Life Services

ATLANTA MARRIOTT MARQUIS

Retreat to the 4-star atrium at our downtown Atlanta hotel

Enjoy the best of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, at Atlanta Marriott Marquis. Step into our stunning, famous atrium and know that you have arrived at our iconic 52 story hotel in Atlanta, GA, just minutes from Atlanta Airport ATL.

Nelson dancing the “Flamingo” with Sir Richard Branson in Pink Flamingo costumes while visiting his private island in the British Virgin Islands for an invitation-only gathering of disruptive entrepreneurs.

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Nelson Griswold
Co-Founder & Chairman of ASCEND

A controversial and disruptive healthcare visionary, Nelson Griswold has an impressive track record of educating benefits advisers on the cutting-edge trends, techniques, and tools that grow their business by helping their clients provide higher-quality healthcare that’s affordable and sustainable.


As the prime architect of the NextGen Benefits model that is disrupting employer-sponsored healthcare in the U.S., Nelson was invited to participate in a high-level meeting of disruptive entrepreneurs from around the globe hosted by the legendary Sir Richard Branson on his private island in the British Virgin Islands.


He is founder and director of the renowned NextGen Benefits Mastermind Partnership, a nationwide alliance of leaders of top independent healthcare advisory and consulting firms with a 10-year history of collaboration and innovation.


Chief Executive magazine featured Nelson in a 2020 article on CEO’s success with NextGen Benefits strategies. CEO Today magazine named Nelson a 2022 Healthcare Awards Finalist. He also was named a Finalist for the 2018 Health Value Award for Outstanding Consultant Leadership at the World Health Care Congress and was honored with the prestigious Industry Leadership Award by the Voluntary Benefits Association.


For almost 10 years, Nelson wrote a popular monthly column for Employee Benefit Adviser magazine and currently writes for other publications including Employee Benefit News, BenefitsPRO, and Entrepreneur.


He is a member of the exclusive Forbes Business Council and serves on the Board of Advisers for Aspirational Healthcare and the Validation Institute. He is a past president of both the Workplace Benefits Association and the Voluntary Benefits Association.


Before his career in benefits and healthcare, Nelson had a distinguished career as a nationally recognized public policy expert, serving as president of two public policy think tanks promoting a free-market and limited-government agenda. Nelson also has worked in radio, as host of both a morning drive talk show and a popular jazz music program.


A graduate of the University of Tennessee with a degree in history, he and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Nashville and have two grown children and a beautiful baby granddaughter

FAQs

What is NextGen Benefits?

NextGen Benefits is a revolutionary model for employer-sponsored healthcare plans that empowers the employer to make healthcare a controllable cost using standard business principles. NextGen Benefits plan designs improve the quality and lower the cost of the healthcare that employees purchase by managing the healthcare supply chain with a variety of innovative cost-containment strategies and techniques.

What is the origin of NextGen Benefits?

While the basic NextGen concepts of self-funding, transparency, aligned incentives, and supply chain management are not new, the name “NextGen Benefits” dates back to 2017, when disruptive industry visionary Nelson Griswold applied the term to the overarching strategy to reclaim control of quality and cost in employer-sponsored health plans.

Who can do NextGen Benefits?

NextGen Benefits is for any employee benefits broker who is ready to become relevant again and to start helping employers take control of their healthcare spend to improve the quality of healthcare and lower the costs for both the employer and employees.

Isn’t NextGen Benefits just self-funding of a company’s health plan?

Not at all, although self-funding is required in NextGen health plans. Self-funding is necessary but not sufficient to allow for the management of the healthcare supply chain, i.e., the quality and cost of the healthcare a company’s employees purchase.

What are the Primary Concepts of NextGen Benefits?

Three Primary Concepts – Catalyst, Foundation, Strategy – underlie NextGen Benefits:

CATALYST  - THE C-SUITE. Support & oversight of an executive with P&L responsibility are almost always necessary for successful implementation of NextGen Benefits.
FOUNDATION - SELF-FUNDING. NextGen Benefits cannot manage the quality and cost of healthcare without control of the plan, which requires disintermediation of the insurance company, the healthcare middleman.

STRATEGY - HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT. Managing the supply chain of healthcare purchased by employees is how NextGen health plans ensure high-quality care and low costs.

ASCEND 2024 Agenda