- October 5, 2026
When a Flagler Schools retiree, who has retained the district’s health insurance, spoke about his difficulties with the new plan at a recent School Board meeting, board members said they were aware of the situation.
“Anybody who has a question, please reach out,” board member Lauren Ramirez said. “It’s a new system, but there’s definitely support staff here to assist.”
The retiree had called the new system “a disaster.”
He said AdventHealth would not accept medical insurer UMR HealthSCOPE. Neither would a doctor in Winter Haven who his wife had been referred to perform a procedure.
At the time of that board meeting, the district had just come to an agreement with AdventHealth, Josh Walker, the district’s chief Human Resources officer, said.
The district switched to the new self-insurance plan in May. Open enrollment was in June, but the plan didn’t go into effect until September.
Not everyone was ready for the new system. But changes were necessary, Walker said.
“If we didn't make any changes, we were facing a 20% increase to our medical costs over what was previously projected,” Walker said. “So, with that, we looked at different options with our broker, Brown & Brown.”
The option they chose was a medical carrier with no true network. There is a process where the insured member nominates their provider to ClaimDoc, a medical claim auditing company. ClaimDoc will look to see if that provider submits claims to the plan that are not completely over the Medicare rate, Waker said. ClaimDoc assigns a member advocate to the insured employee. If the provider is not accepted the advocate will provide alternatives.
“Essentially what we are looking at is, we understand that there are rising medical claims costs everywhere and what this allows us to do is try to help control those costs while still maintaining accessibility and providing excellent services to our employees,” Walker said.
The retiree, who spoke during the board meeting’s public comment period, said the people at ClaimDoc are very nice.
Flagler Schools Assistant Superintendent Angela O’Brien, said ClaimDoc’s customer service would rival Chick-fil-A.
“Really, they have been wonderful, and they call, they'll communicate,” she said. “It’s just that it’s different. Typically, as you walk into a doctor's office, the medical assistant at the front desk is the person making sure that your insurance is authorized. In this case, we are asking our employees early on to make sure that the providers that they want to see are in this system. It’s a new process. It’s newish for some providers as well.”
Details of the new health plan have been communicated since last school year,” O’Brien said.
“But until you have to use it, we, as people, ignore that communication,” she said. “Then when we need health care, we go back and read what we need to do.”
Walker said the district sent out a pretty lengthy communication last week to educate the 1,200 to 1,300 employees about the plan. And they are planning site visits with the district’s benefits specialist to all of the schools.
“And we’ll also have another webinar, because now folks will have that tangible proof of, this is what it looks like. Here are my questions,” Walker said.
