Events, Payers

How can payers reimagine patient engagement?

At MedCity ENGAGE in San Diego next month, a group of experts will weigh in on how health insurers can be better innovators and help their members have more meaningful experiences.

hands, people, stakeholders

Health insurers aren’t typically considered trailblazers when it comes to patient engagement. What can they do to become better innovators and help their members have more meaningful experiences?

A group of healthcare experts will weigh in on this very question at MedCity ENGAGE in San Diego on November 6-7. Prior to the event, a few panelists voiced their thoughts on the topic.

“I think that still today, health plans are not doing nearly enough to engage their members,” Abner Mason, a panelist and the founder and CEO of ConsejoSano, said in a phone interview. His business is a patient engagement and navigation company focused on helping its clients engage multicultural patient populations. ConsejoSano’s customers include payers serving Medicaid and Medicare Advantage members.

Mason offered a bit of advice regarding how insurers can better connect with members.

The first tip is to realize that a one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t work. The nation is becoming more and more multicultural, but health plans haven’t changed their engagement tactics. “You have to figure out who people are and then design your messaging for them,” Mason said. It’s key for payers to approach these members with humility and take time to understand their needs.

Additionally, Mason pointed out that health plans often use older, outdated modes like snail mail to convey information to their members. “They may as well be using Morse code to communicate,” he said. Mason advised them to instead use text messaging, a much more common form of communication, to engage their members.


Attend MedCity ENGAGE to hear from healthcare experts like Abner Mason, Hope Kragh and Mike Tarino. Save an additional $50 using the MCN50 code. Register now.


Fellow panelist Hope Kragh, vice president of client success at Collective Health, also weighed in on the idea of engagement. Collective Health has developed a health benefits solution for U.S. companies.

“We’re seeing employers continue to make a huge investment in innovative health benefits they offer their employees, and they’re increasingly curating those offerings to address their companies’ unique healthcare issues,” she said via email. “Engaging employees in these offerings is critical to making the most of that investment — yet for years, they haven’t had the tools or resources available to crack the engagement nut.”

Mike Tarino, Bind’s human experience lead, will be speaking on the ENGAGE panel as well. His company offers on-demand health insurance coverage. In a phone conversation, he noted that numerous other industries — like gaming and online retail — wouldn’t say they have an engagement problem.

“Their core product is the engagement engine,” Tarino said. “It responds to the preferences of the customer. We haven’t done that effectively in healthcare and in health insurance.”

Thus, the engagement conversation needs to be around creating a product that responds to what consumers actually want.

Photo: Rawpixel, Getty Images

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