The healthcare landscape is evolving and there is an enormous amount of pressure on health plans to significantly improve the quality of services they offer. In today’s healthcare ecosystem health plans must deliver an exceptional and personalized member experience and focus their efforts on member engagement and satisfaction. This is no longer an option – it is a demand from consumers and critical for health plans to survive.
The rising expectations of members to receive a personalized experience that includes transparency and information at their fingertips is causing health plans to rethink their business models. Historically, the health insurance industry has been a B2B operation based on premiums and reimbursements. Today, however, health plans are transforming from platforms for purchasing insurance into health management bodies striving to engage members and provide resources to help them change their health and wellness behaviors.
Health plans that understand this new landscape know it is critical to provide a relevant, high-touch and personalized member experience. Those that do so will see:
- Higher adoption, engagement and retention rates
- Reduced complaints
- Lowered costs
- Improved STAR ratings
- Improved HEDIS scores
When it comes to delivering a personalized experience the ultimate goal is to tailor the experience at every stage of the member journey. While achieving this may seem like a long-shot, it is certainly not impossible. Understanding the challenges and strategically developing a plan to address them will get you started down the right path. With that being said, let’s take a look at the top 3 challenges to delivering a personalized member experience:
- Lack of a Single View/Member 360
Without a complete view of all consumer data, it’s difficult to know who your members are and how to anticipate their response at any given time. This boils down to a data management issue for organizations. According to a study by Experian, companies struggle to gain this single view because they cannot connect data across different systems, they suffer from poor data quality, and they lack relevant supporting technology. - Lack of Ability to Gain and Apply Insights Quickly
To create a personalized experience in the moment, you can’t limit yourself to optimizing it for one channel, nor can you solely rely on historical and basic member profile data. The key here is being able to scale personalized experiences. To do this, your digital experience platform needs to be able to harness and analyze data to automatically deliver customized content and pricing to individuals.
- Lack of Internal Resources to Execute
Securing internal resources to execute a personalization strategy is another major challenge. A recent study by Forrester reveals 66% of marketers stated this is a major obstacle for implementing personalized marketing programs. Identifying who owns the role is a critical first step. It’s important to consider – and assign dedicated resources – as you move from planning to executing your personalization strategy.
While personalization may seem like a daunting journey it is critical to member engagement and retention and something health plans must strategically plan for.
Want to learn more? Join our complimentary webinar featuring Kaiser Permanente and learn how to:
- Engage your entire membership community through a personalized and connected experience
- Drive better outcomes and improve healthcare value
- Use Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to advance goals, such as improved member onboarding and new services engagement
