Written by Matt Fiel
Trend 1: Employers Will Keep Looking Beyond Physical Health
As employers fight the Great Resignation, it’s clear that financial compensation isn’t the only factor that improves employee retention.
Leaders on people experience teams at plan sponsors are increasingly viewing benefit plans as vehicles for recruitment and retention. They’re also looking beyond physical health, aspiring to offer holistic wellness strategies that prioritize emotional, financial, and spiritual well-being.
In order to attract more plan sponsors, health insurance companies must optimize their plan designs to incorporate benefits that go beyond physical health. This means covering mental health care, giving members more control over financial decions, reducing redundant processes, and offering incentives for positive healthcare choices.
Trend 2: Members Will Expect Genuine Engagement
How you interact with members has a huge impact not only on plan satisfaction, but healthcare outcomes. The quality of engagement also depends on the digital tools you have at your disposal. True engagement requires interaction – it’s not about a one-way discourse. Every member engagement strategy should be supported with the following platforms:
- Omnichannel Communications Platform (Email, SMS, Phone)
The marketing automation tool is the foundation of your care journeys. From open enrollment to scheduled communications throughout the plan year, this tool will help you guide members towards better healthcare decisions, financial stability, and wise funding decisions. -
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
CDP is a bit of a buzzword these days, but that doesn’t diminish its importance in your engagement strategy. Member engagement requires a segmented database based on detailed demographics. Segmentation not only helps you cater towards target markets with relevant plan designs, but also personalize communications.
Trend 3: Healthcare Companies will Seek to Integrate Disparate Systems
Healthcare systems are famously disparate, and it creates headaches for your members. It’s not just in the health insurance tech stack. Member data often bounces between multiple clinical, financial, administrative, and operational systems – and members are often required to fill out forms multiple times for data that already exists.
This results in inaccurate information across multiple platforms, and a fragmented view of the member.
By integrating data between administrative and operational systems, health insurance companies ensure data is not only accurate, but that members aren’t forced to re-enter data multiple times. Such a “convergence” platform requires configuration and customization. Point solutions aren’t customizable enough to fulfill all administrative and operational use cases, so a tailored health insurance CRM is often necessary.
Platform customization also means that previously manual processes like underwriting, claims management, payments, and policy can be automated – leading to significant cost savings.
Trend 4: Employers Will Continue Shifting Towards Value-Based Plans
It’s no secret that rising inflation is affecting more than the cost of groceries. Furthermore, since premium costs are outpacing the quality of coverage, it’s important to always offer value-based plans as an alternative. With the right plan design, high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) are great options for relatively healthy members to lower premium costs – and offset the inflationary trend.
By providing education around how to properly invest in HSAs and FSAs, this value-based approach can lead to higher member satisfaction despite the increasing costs that inflation is causing.
In order to market their full-value, it’s important to clearly show the accounts associated with each plan type. Demonstrate how HSAs put financial decisions in the member’s hands, which could ultimately save them on healthcare costs every month.
Trend 5: We’ll See Innovative New Models to Control Prescription Costs
Personalized medicine is creating a new frontier for improving healthcare outcomes. Unfortunately, cell and gene therapy is also incredibly expensive – and as demand increases, insurance companies need a solution to become the leader in making treatments affordable.
One solution is developing innovative programs that make drugs more affordable, especially those related to cell and gene therapies. This involves creating partnerships between the insurance company and online pharmacy management organizations. Together, they can offer members flat-rate charges on a monthly basis, with no out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions.
This option gives members a highly dependable program for obtaining life-saving drugs, while being financially sustainable for the health insurance company.