This article highlights how personalized engagement and microtargeting help health plans motivate members to adopt healthier behaviors. By leveraging data and pilot programs, health plans can offer tailored solutions and build trust, especially among Medicare and Medicaid members.
Health plans and their members share the same goal: improving health and outcomes through behavioral changes. However, plans face challenges in activating members and motivating them to maintain changes over time.
At AHIP’s recent Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum, digital health experts discussed how microtargeting, personalized programs and culturally sensitive approaches help inspire and sustain these changes.
“It helps to serve things up naturally and organically in a way that members don’t need to think about what’s next,” said Briana Leeder, director of strategic client marketing for Teladoc Health. Leeder pointed to how Netflix offers personalized recommendations that make choices simple for consumers. “I want options to be served up easily, and I think many consumers do too.”
Plans and their partners can use “microtargeting” to address issues relevant to each member without overwhelming them. Consumer data, including behavior insights, clinical interactions and device readings, can inform personalized offerings aimed at improving each member’s experience and outcomes.
Teladoc Health recommends using pilot projects to apply these insights to new initiatives, as this allows plans to prioritize resources and actions based on early results. For one pilot conducted in partnership with Catapult, an in-home wellness assessment vendor, members receiving wellness checks were referred to Teladoc Health’s programs based on identified needs (e.g., chronic condition management, virtual primary care and/or mental health).
When a member is receiving an in-home HbA1c test and finds out they have prediabetes, “it’s a really opportune time to drive them into some of these chronic condition management programs and to let them know they have other resources that can help them,” said Nabomita Dutta, chief strategy and partnerships officer for Teladoc Health. “It’s more than just a phone call—it’s a human being to help you through what can often be an isolating experience.”
While Teladoc Health or the health plan may have reached out to these members in the past, the A1c test on-site is often the message that brings home the realization that their health is truly at risk. “And so that handoff to our enrollment team now takes precedence over any other outreach,” Leeder said. “It makes that impact because it’s about meeting members at the right time with the right message.”
Plans kicking off pilots and other new initiatives must ensure they build trust. This can be more challenging with Medicare and Medicaid members, noted Hunter Sinclair, vice president for solution strategy at Teladoc Health. To build trust among these members, Sinclair recommends a multi-modality outreach including telephone calls, SMS messages and working with case management staff.
Dutta added that partnering with brick-and-mortar community providers can also promote trust with members and even boost the effectiveness of plan initiatives. Often, when a plan receives health data points on a member, they arrive too late to take early action. However, community providers’ devices track members much more continuously and can provide early signals that intervention is needed.
Culturally relevant strategies are key for populations that are often underrepresented in the health care ecosystem. Teladoc Health worked with a plan that was struggling with HbA1c control for Latino men and saw positive results by by leveraging bilingual call center staff, creating tailored marketing, and offering a diabetes management program available in both Spanish and English from end to end.
Among all populations, co-branding with the health plan is a significant step to building trust. It lets members know messages about a new program are legitimate. Additionally, they know they can call their health plan for more information if they have questions.
Once members are in the door, the focus shifts to keeping them engaged. Leeder told attendees about a pilot for an inactivity tracker that monitored members’ device readings and created an alert when people were just beginning to reduce their amount of engagement. “Before they truly became inactive, we could identify when we needed to send them a new message to try to reengage them,” Leeder said. “When we implemented communication tied to this pivot point, we saw a 7% lift in those that remained engaged over the next 30 days.”
Intervening before members fall into old habits is ideal, but plans and their partners must help people understand that setbacks are part of reality. “We need to break it down in pieces that are not overwhelming,” Leeder said. Instead of telling members they can only be successful if they keep up actions over the long term, health management initiatives work best “in moments.”
By reaching members at the right time with targeted information and focusing on manageable steps they can take each day, plans can activate members and keep them engaged as they improve their health and their lives.
Teladoc Health empowers all people everywhere to live their healthiest lives by transforming the healthcare experience. As the world leader in whole-person virtual care, Teladoc Health uses proprietary health signals and personalized interactions to drive better health outcomes across the full continuum of care, at every stage in a person’s health journey. Teladoc Health leverages more than two decades of expertise and data-driven insights to meet the growing virtual care needs of consumers and healthcare professionals. For more information, please visit www.TeladocHealth.com or follow @TeladocHealth on X (formerly Twitter).
