What does CFH Insurance Consultants actually do?

We are an independent employee benefits consulting firm. We advise employers on group health, dental, vision, life, disability and voluntary benefits - plan design, funding, carrier and renewal negotiation, compliance, and the benefits administration that runs underneath all of it. The work is continuous rather than annual: the renewal is where it becomes visible, but most of it happens in the months either side.

How long have you been in business?

CFH has been operating since 2007. The people here have been in insurance considerably longer than the firm has existed, which is a different claim and worth keeping separate - the firm's own track record starts in 2007. The firm’s incorporation date is a matter of public record with the State of Michigan, if you want to check it.

Where are you, and where do you work?

Our main office is at 41000 Woodward Avenue, Suite 350 East, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, with additional offices in Colorado Springs and Houston. Michigan is the home market and where most of the work is, but our licensing follows clients beyond it, which matters when an employer's people are not all in one state.

Are you independent, or owned by a carrier or a national group?

Independent. No carrier owns us and no national brokerage sets what we recommend, which is the whole reason a recommendation from us is worth reading. It is a fair question to ask of anyone advising you on a plan, because the answer determines whether the advice can ever point away from a particular carrier.

What size employers do you work with?

From small groups through the mid-market, and the work looks genuinely different across that range - under fifty the levers are plan design, contributions and carrier; above it your own claims start driving the number and funding becomes a real decision. If you want the version specific to your size, the pages by company size lay out what changes at each band.

What industries do you work in?

A broad mix rather than one niche, with real concentration in a few - manufacturing, health care, professional services, mortgage lending and hospitality among them. Industry matters less than workforce shape: a business with variable-hour staff across several sites has more in common with another business like it than with a competitor in its own sector.

Are you licensed outside Michigan?

Yes. Licensing follows the client rather than the office, which is what allows an employer headquartered here to be served properly when its people are spread across several states. If you have employees somewhere specific, ask us about that state directly - it is a factual question with a factual answer.

What happens in a first conversation?

Twenty to thirty minutes, no proposal. You describe what you have and what the renewal looks like, and we tell you whether the number is in line with what comparable employers are being quoted or whether it is not. If it is fair, we say so. Nothing is sent afterwards unless you ask for it. If you are comparing firms first, how to choose an employee benefits broker in Michigan lists the questions to ask each one.

Do we have to be a client to ask you something?

No. A large part of what we do before anyone signs anything is answering questions from employers who are working something out - a compliance date, a renewal that does not read right, whether an arrangement someone is pitching them is real. If it takes a few minutes, it takes a few minutes.

We are not a third-party administrator. We find, vet and manage the administrators our clients use, which means the administrator answers to somebody on your side of the table rather than to itself. We are licensed insurance brokers, not attorneys or accountants - though CPAs and ERISA attorneys are available to clients through the firm for the questions that need them.

Brighton Benefits and the New Trinity Health Hospital

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Brighton, Michigan, in Livingston County along I-96 and US-23

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS CONSULTING · BRIGHTON, MICHIGAN

Brighton Benefits Consulting With Two Health Systems in Town

Livingston County’s hospital moved to Brighton in April 2026 — and it does not deliver babies. If your plan and your employee communications have not caught up, this is the year to fix that. Fully insured group plans sold in Michigan are regulated by the state Department of Insurance and Financial Services.

Call 248.370.8853

Photo: WeaponizingArchitecture, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The hospital moved. Here is exactly what changed.

Trinity Health Livingston Hospital opened at 7575 Grand River Avenue on April 19, 2026 — a Brighton mailing address, physically in Genoa Township. It is 174,000 square feet, with 56 acuity-adaptable beds, an 18-bed short-stay unit, nine licensed operating rooms, and a $238.2 million price tag. A further 24 beds are planned for 2027.

On the same day, the legacy Howell hospital at 620 Byron Road closed. Ambulances were diverted to Brighton at 4 a.m., inpatient transport began at 8 a.m., and the Howell emergency department closed to walk-ins at 1 p.m. The Howell building has been sold to Catholic Healthcare International; Trinity leases a small space inside it and still runs a lab draw station and sleep lab there, along with primary care, urgent care and physical therapy elsewhere in Howell.

If rising premiums are the concern, our health and cost strategy shows where cost can move between renewals.

The new hospital has no labor and delivery unit. For an employer with a workforce of childbearing age, that is a concrete planning fact: your employees will deliver outside the county. Travel distance, network status at the delivering facility, and what your plan says about emergency versus non-emergency obstetric care are all worth checking before someone finds out the hard way.

Two health systems, one ZIP code

Brighton is served by Trinity Health and by University of Michigan Health, which operates the Brighton Center for Specialty Care on the north side of the city. That is unusual, and it is an advantage if you use it.

Network tiering actually bites here

With two competing systems in town, a narrow or tiered network is not an abstraction. It determines which of your employees keep their physician.

Census mapping before you sign

We map where your people live and which system they already use, then test candidate networks against that — not against a county-level average.

Obstetric access planning

No local labor and delivery means deliberate plan design: travel considerations, facility network status, and clear employee communication.

Multi-county workforces

A Brighton employer draws from Livingston, Oakland and Washtenaw counties, across three hospital service areas. Your plan has to work in all three.

A small city inside a large market

The City of Brighton had 7,904 residents as of July 1, 2025. That number badly understates the market. Add Brighton Township (19,489), Genoa Township (20,576) and Green Oak Township (19,901) and the Brighton area runs to roughly 68,000 people; Livingston County as a whole stood at 197,315, and SEMCOG projects about 238,000 by 2050.

It is an affluent catchment — Brighton Township’s median household income is $132,610 and 95% of homes are owner-occupied; countywide poverty is 4.9%. It is also a commuting county: the mean travel time to work in Livingston County is 30.6 minutes against a Michigan average of 24.2. Within the city itself the commute is shorter at 24.8 minutes, and 18.2% of Brighton residents work from home.

One genuinely useful local asset: Michigan Flyer runs 14 daily round trips from the Brighton Meijer to East Lansing, Ann Arbor and Detroit Metro Airport, and that stop returned to the Meijer on September 21, 2026 after operating from a Park & Ride during I-96 and Grand River construction. For employers with staff or travel across those markets, it is one stop connecting three of them.

Main Employers in the Brighton Area

Trinity Health Livingston Hospital is now the county’s acute-care anchor, and it sits in Brighton rather than Howell for the first time. University of Michigan Health operates the Brighton Center for Specialty Care on the city’s north side. Brighton Area Schools serves roughly 5,900 students with close to 500 employees.

Livingston County carried 64,082 covered jobs as of March 2026, at an average weekly wage of $1,133. Among Brighton residents, the largest employment sectors are retail trade, health care and social assistance, and manufacturing, with management the single largest occupational category — a professional, commuting population rather than a plant town.

A note on what we are not telling you: Livingston County is often described as automotive supplier territory. That fits Howell and the wider county better than Brighton itself, and we could not verify the current status of specific suppliers, so we are not going to name them. If you are one, we would rather hear it from you than guess.

Livingston County Communities Near Brighton

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Quick Answers for Brighton Businesses

Does the new Brighton hospital deliver babies?

No. Trinity Health Livingston Hospital, which opened at 7575 Grand River Avenue on April 19, 2026, does not have a labor and delivery unit. Employees will deliver outside Livingston County. It is worth confirming that the facilities your employees would realistically use are in-network under your plan, and telling them so before they need to know.

What happened to the Howell hospital?

It closed to patients on April 19, 2026, the same day the Brighton hospital opened. The building at 620 Byron Road has been sold to Catholic Healthcare International. Trinity Health leases space inside it and continues to operate a lab draw station and a sleep lab there, and still runs primary care, urgent care and physical therapy at other Howell locations.

Why does having two health systems in Brighton matter for our plan?

Because tiered and narrow networks stop being theoretical. Trinity Health and University of Michigan Health both serve Brighton, so a network that favors one will disrupt whichever of your employees use the other. We map your employee census against each network before you commit rather than discovering the split during open enrollment.

Our employees live across three counties. Does that complicate things?

It is the normal situation for a Brighton employer and it is manageable, but it does rule out picking a network on price alone. Staff commuting from Livingston, Oakland and Washtenaw counties sit in different hospital service areas, so adequacy has to be tested for each cluster of your workforce, not just for the headquarters ZIP code.

Is the Brighton renewal review free?

No. Send us your plan documents and renewal and we will tell you what we would change. If your current arrangement is already sound, we will say so.

Employees asking where they will deliver now? Talk to CFH about switching.

Have Us Review Your Brighton Renewal

If you have not revisited your plan since the hospital moved in April 2026, that alone is worth an hour. No charge, no obligation.

Start the Review Email info@cfhic.com Call 248.370.8853

An independent employee benefits consulting firm. We look at the entire benefits program — cost, plan performance, risk and administration.

Michigan41000 Woodward Avenue, Suite 350 East
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
248.370.8853

Colorado13540 Northgate Estates, Suite 100
Colorado Springs, CO 80921
719.425.2649

Texas16365 Park Ten Place, Suite 182
Houston, TX 77084
281.404.5670

Employee Benefits for Brighton Employers After the Hospital Move