To highlight the importance of consumer engagement by payers, a health rewards company has ranked health insurers based on how they got members involved in their daily health through the use of mobile tools and social media.
The top-rated plan of the EveryMove 100 Health Insurance Index is the Capital District Physician's Health Plan (CDPHP), a not-for-profit insurer in 24 New York counties, the company said in a news release Tuesday.
EveryMove evaluated plans using 50 metrics to come up with an aggregate score that indicates how well they meet consumer needs for accessibility, motivation, community activism and overall satisfaction. The index takes into consideration whether the plans offer self-service options, incentive programs to motivate healthy habits and direct engagement with consumers and community groups. The company normalized the data to account for health plan sizes.
Following Capital District Physician's Health Plan, the next top performers were:
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona
• Independence Blue Cross
• Blue Cross and Blue shield of Illinois
• Humana
• Cigna
Consumers seeking coverage through the health insurance exchanges as a result of the Affordable Care Act need more tools with which to compare information about health plans, including how they communicate and support their members, said Russell Benaroya, EveryMove CEO and co-founder. Insurers will be offering a variety of plans with a range of prices and cost-sharing.
"If health plans are going to expect consumers to bear an increasing amount of out-of-pocket expense, then consumers are going to start to demand a different type of relationship with their health plans that is based today on the effectiveness of outreach and communication, and social and mobile media are critical pillars of that," Benaroya said.
Capital District Physician's Health Plan, for example, has a CDPHP Lifepoints Program, which will pay a member up to $365 a year for leading a healthy lifestyle and having healthy habits, he said. On their Facebook page, they also promote their community activism, including a $12,000 donation to a garden project in partnership with a roadrunner's club. "A lot of plans are active in the community, but nobody knows," Benaroya said.
To top the index, the leading insurers outperformed the others especially in these five criteria:
1. Invested in mobile tools, such as mobile apps for smartphones or a mobile website.
2. Refreshed content on websites to make it more effective and popular with consumers.
3. Enabled and participated in social media, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.
4. Surveyed users on perception of health plans' level of engagement.
5. Provided easy visibility and accessibility to health plan customer support.
Any health plan can have a Facebook account, but that doesn't mean the insurer is actively using it to initiate conversations. "Where CDPHP excelled was in their level of engagement, actually using social media to drive a conversation," Benaroya said. "What we also noticed about CDPHP and the other top health plans was, it was not that they were great at any one thing, but they has some investment across those five areas broadly."