How to Drive Benefit Use & Protect Patient Health in the COVID Era

And plans have begun to partner with technology companies to offer innovative services like Ginger, which provides behavioral health support, or Kiio, a digital program that helps manage lower back pain.

The way to get a member to use these tools is to by alerting her to their availability when the member is most likely to need them. A member searching for a chiropractor should receive an alert — by email, text or app notification, based on her preferences — telling her that her benefits include Kiio. Then, with a single click or tap on her phone screen, she should be taken to Kiio or the appropriate page on the plan’s website.

The COVID crisis provided a real-time demonstration of the value of those kind of communications — urgent updates like waived copays or new telehealth options had a far greater impact for plans that were able to inform members of those changes quickly and effectively.

Plans that have the technology to define cohorts of members based on demographics, then sequence the appropriate messaging in minutes, not weeks or months, will be able to deliver effective, timely communications that reach members where they want to be reached, when the messages are most relevant. Those plans will see higher benefit utilization rates — and safer, happier members as a result.

Making Member Experience Pay Off

Just as COVID has heightened the need for effective push communications, the pandemic has made it vitally important for plans to offer digital self-service for members who expect to be able to find information and conduct basic transactions on their smart phones and laptops.

Even older consumers increasingly prefer digital transactions over in-person or call-center interactions. By eliminating the in-person option and making call-center wait times interminable, COVID only heightened the need for health plans to offer intuitive, user-friendly member portals and mobile apps, plus chatbots and search tools that help members get the information they need, when they need it, on benefits, providers, costs and other critical decision factors.

The plans that drive up benefit utilization — and with it, member satisfaction and market share — in the COVID environment will likely be the ones that offer the kind of digital experiences consumers have been conditioned to expect by airlines, banks, streaming services, retailers and other businesses.

Health plans can expect member experience to take on greater weight in group purchasing decisions as business leaders seek to give their employees the most modern, effective and efficient means for managing their care.

The good news: in 2018, 81% of payer organizations said they were investing in member experience technology. In the pandemic era, the investments most likely to pay off will be those that enable plans to deliver the messages prompting members to use their benefits in ways that lead to better health outcomes.

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Mark Nathan is the founder and chief executive officer at Zipari, a health insurance consumer experience technology company.