Americans working to improve their eating and activity habits often fail, and not for lack of investment by employers, insurers and wellness vendors. Despite, or perhaps because of those challenges, Cigna is taking another crack at the problem.
Cigna is rolling out a new iteration of its wellness and health coaching program called Cigna Health Matters, with the aim of helping "customers set and meet health goals by matching every customer to the right tool at the right time."
Many employers are investing in wellness programs and increasingly integrating online and smartphone diet and exercise apps and wearable technology. Yet "a surprisingly small percentage of Americans use them to improve their health, measure progress and achieve positive results," Cigna leaders concluded from a recent survey.
In a Cigna survey of 1,800 U.S. adults, in fact, a majority were taking steps to improve their health, but not many were succeeding: 85 percent were still working toward their goals, with 40 percent blaming themselves for a lack of willpower and about as many blaming distractions.
One factor that many believed could help them, though, is something that Cigna is trying to leverage in its new initiative: positive reinforcement and rewards.
That finding is partly what convinced Cigna to launch the Health Matters program, a suite of health coaching tools available online and on mobile platforms with social media, games and cash and gift card incentives. It's being rolled out to Cigna's 14 million employer-sponsored health plan members.
"Cigna Health Matters integrates the latest insights and practices of the sociology of engagement, motivation and rewarding behavior change with the latest in health tools and technology," said Eric Herbek, the company's VP of product development and consumer health engagement. "By combining clinical insights, health coaches, digital tools, measurement and reward engines, we have our customers' backs to help them get on the right path, and stay on it."
Health Matters begins with a twist on the traditional wellness program's initiation -- a "gamified health assessment," a survey members complete during enrollment. The data from the assessment is paired with data on body mass index, cholesterol, blood pressure and information on member preferences, and then incorporated into a "Health Matters Score." That score, for which Cigna has a patent pending, will reflect improvements in an individuals health status and engagement, and will help Cigna coaches and network clinicians better understand their needs, Herbek said.
As part of the program, Cigna's curated health app store will also let members find the best apps for their needs and preferences and connect with plan-sponsored incentive programs.
"This link is crucial as during the past several years, we've learned the importance of connecting health improvement to tangible, immediate, recognition and incentives," Herbek said. The overall idea is "to anticipate customer needs and provide the right tool to address those needs."