Hello,
I apologize that we were unable to speak to the reason why we decided to separate from Silver Sneakers when we notified you of the cancellation of our partnership with them in November. As promised, we are now writing to you about the circumstances that lead to the cancellation of Silver Sneakers through Tivity Health.
I need to explain how this system works, as Tivity Health is a third party who managed the money for your health care system. Your insurance provider has an agreement with Tivity Health that states that they will pay Tivity to manage this benefit for them (they are a middleman between us and the insurance company). This is what they do as a multi-billion dollar company. Tivity then reaches out to many providers of health and wellness programming, and then negotiates a contract with them individually. We as a provider have to sign a contract that we will not disclose this practice to you, the user, or anyone else, during the life of the contract.
We are not allowed to ask other providers what they are receiving as payment, not even other YMCA’s, as again, every contract is negotiated separately. They do this in order to get the lowest pay out to each organization. They don’t want groups talking and forming alliances. I am still not legally allowed to share what we got paid from them, but essentially pennies on the dollar. Tivity Health received money from the insurance provided based on number of people signed up. We received payment based on usage. Our Y received no payment unless someone came at least 4 times a month. Then it was roughly 15% of what Tivity got paid from the insurance provider. We only got payment close to our actual membership price if a member came 12 times or more a month. We had hundreds of Silver Sneaker members, and only received payment for about 30% of them, and of that 30% only about 18% of those got close to the full membership payment. Tivity keeps the rest of the money from the insurance provider as profit. They are a publicly traded company and so stockholders are the benefactors of your funds more than the not-for-profit YMCA.
We had hoped to continue on with Silver Sneakers when it was time to renew our contract with them, but when we asked for better rates there seemed to be little interest on their end to do what it would take to make this possible. To make matters worse, on top of the already low margin we received from Tivity, they did not pay us during the pandemic for all visits. They gave us a choice of either in-person or virtual only. If it was Silver Sneaker's position that they didn't see the value of virtual, then we would have debated it, but understood it. Rather, they said they would compensate for in-person or online, but not both services, which is a contrition on their part that they knew both options were of equal value, they just didn't want to compensate us for our services. We feel that was a heavy-handed Sophie's choice of a decision to put us in, because neither option would make the YMCA whole for services rendered.
Other third-party payment plans understood our expenses and agreed to raise their level of payment accordingly. Silver Sneakers did not want to. We have real expenses that we need to cover, and other third-party plans have chosen to see those costs and do the fair thing. Ultimately Tivity Health gave us a take it or leave it option and so we are choosing to leave it. When we made the decision it was difficult because we love our Silver Sneaker members, but we are not able to afford to participate in that program when we are not even reimbursed to a level that pays our bills.
We want to make sure that you know that the YMCA has membership plans for Seniors and Households that are very affordable, and there is always Y-Assist for those who need financial assistance: www.ymcasuperiorcal.org/y-assist. We do hope you will consider staying with us.
We are sorry if this has hurt you, and we'd hate to see you go. But understand that this decision was made so that we have that opportunity for long-term viability.
Please stay safe this winter during the pandemic, we hope to open our doors to you again soon.
Sincerely,
Sharna Braucks
President & CEO
YMCA of Superior California