Insurance has a price. Risk has a cost. They are not the same number.
Your renewal shows you the first one every year. Almost nobody in this industry measures the second.
Most health center executives can answer our first two questions without thinking. Almost nobody can answer the third.
Do you know your cost per patient encounter?
Do you know your margin per encounter?
Do you know your cost of risk per encounter?
Yes. Yes. No.
That's how almost every health center executive answers. You know your operations down to the penny until the question is risk.
Two health centers. Same size, same kind of care. One reports $55,000 a year in insurance spend. The other reports $312,000.
Maybe the first one is running lean. Or maybe it's running bare, and it finds out the year something goes wrong. Maybe the second one is well protected. Or maybe it's been quietly funding its carrier's best year, renewal after renewal.
Neither of them knows which story is theirs. And nobody who sells them insurance has ever been asked to figure it out.
If you answered yes to all three, you're in rare company.
You already know how rare. Most centers have never been given that third number.
Knowing the number is rare. Using it is rarer.
If your renewal conversation starts with premium instead of cost of risk, you're being quoted. Not advised.
How many patient encounters does your center handle in a year?
60,000 encounters / year
10,0001,000,000
Among the 150 centers nearest this size in public filings, reported insurance spend alone runs per encounter.
a year
carried at encounters, before workers comp, injuries, training, safety staffing, or anything retained
At this volume, every $1.00 per encounter is a year.
A gap between centers doing comparable care
And reported insurance is only one line of six. You'll see the rest in a minute.
More than a clinic? Housing, food programs, senior services. One blended number tells you nothing about where the risk actually lives. We quantify clinical and non-clinical risk separately, so you can see which side is carrying the cost and work with us to bring both down.
Figures from 2024 UDS patient data and the most recent Form 990 filings of 952 health centers. Your service mix, FTCA scope, and payer mix all move this number. That's why a benchmark is a starting point, not an answer.
Some risk you insure. The rest you retain.
Retained risk
Every deductible. Every claim that never gets filed. Every gap between what you bought and what you face. Every risk nobody sells a policy for.
Insurance expense
Workers comp
Injury cost exposure
Training investment
Safety & compliance staffing
These five we estimate from the outside, and we label every one for what it is: reported figures that filings state inconsistently, and benchmarks standing in for actuals.
The retained layer is different. It can't even be estimated from out here.
It may be the largest line on your page. Right now, nobody can tell you. That's the point.
This is the sample, built at national medians.
Yours reads differently. Tap any domain to expand it.
RISKCLEAR SNAPSHOT
RiskClear Snapshot: Sample Community Health Center
ILLUSTRATIVE SAMPLE · NATIONAL MEDIANS · NOT A REAL CENTER
~$13–15PER PATIENT ENCOUNTER in visible and benchmarked cost of risk, before the one layer only this center can fill in.
THE RISK SPECTRUMWHAT PUBLIC DATA SHOWS
250 employees, 84,000 visits, and outpatient work carries a 3.5 injury rate against the 2.3 all-industry average.
8 sites with buildings 55% depreciated: a figure most boards have never connected to insured values.
Six school settings, a mobile unit, telehealth, and a $4.8M pharmacy. HRSA's new Scope Manual (August 2026) treats each one differently, and HRSA is explicit that being in scope does not by itself guarantee FTCA protection.
Contract labor, contract services, and 340B contract pharmacies all act under the center's name. 77% of audited health centers had adverse findings, and repayments are uninsurable by design.
$3.5M in benefits spend and $11.8M in retirement plan assets, and the filing does not show how the medical layer is financed.
20,000 patient records: a typical healthcare incident at this size runs ~$560K in paid claims with ~$175K retained; the 95th percentile reaches $14M.
“Insurance is the least effective way to manage risk. Why is it the starting point for most brokers?”
?
BEST CASE RETAINED RISKWORST CASE RETAINED RISK
The other way to do this.
The industry runs on transactions. Quote, bind, renew, repeat.
It overcompensates brokers relative to the value they deliver. Not because they're greedy, but because their compensation sits inside the premium, where nobody sees it and nobody thinks to negotiate it.
Ask us what we'd earn. We'll tell you to the dollar, before you sign anything.
RM4U is how we work instead: measure your cost of risk, clinical and non-clinical, then work it down with you all year.
The people behind it
A classroom. Social work. Nonprofit boardrooms. Most of this team came to insurance from somewhere else and kept the helping part.
Jackie Lomely
Risk and Insurance Advisor · Bakersfield, CA
A public school teacher before insurance. The job changed. The teaching didn't.
Jackie.Lomely@INSURICA.com · 661-316-5114
Leesha Call, MSW, CLCS
Risk and Insurance Advisor · Oklahoma City, OK
A master's in social work before insurance. Serving community health centers is how she kept the mission.
Leesha.Call@INSURICA.com · 405-292-6407
Jeanean Jones, PhDc, REBC, CFRE
Employee Benefits Advisor · Oklahoma City, OK
Nonprofit board leader and PhD candidate. Relentless about making employee benefits make sense for the people who use them.
Jeanean.Jones@INSURICA.com · 405-556-2358
Drew Colwell
Risk and Insurance Advisor · Helena, MT
Second generation insurance. Ten years in, nearly all of it spent with health centers and social services organizations.
Drew.Colwell@INSURICA.com · 406-333-6309
Every renewal answers the same question: what does your insurance cost?
Nobody's ever answered the better one: what does your risk cost? Your RiskClear Snapshot is where that answer starts. One page, built entirely from your public filings and federal datasets. We need nothing from your team. No questionnaire, no data request, no meeting.
And that's exactly why it can only be a starting point. Public data gets us the visible layers. Your retained risk, the layer that usually matters most, only gets built with you in the room. The Snapshot is where that conversation starts.
One page, delivered by email within a few business days. A starting point, not a verdict. The complete picture only gets built from the inside.
It's in the queue.
Your Snapshot gets built by a person, not a script. Expect it within a few business days.
If you want the fifteen minute version of what it means, reply to the email it arrives in.
