Patient and member engagement efforts can often turn into information overload. With too many emails and in-app messages that aren't a high priority, members can disengage from important healthcare decisions due to overwhelming or irrelevant information.
Oscar Health launched a new messaging framework that simplifies member communications with the aim of increasing engagement.
The prioritization technology, which Oscar calls its next best actions engine, identifies opportunities at the individual level and from there determines personalized steps and action items for users. The tool is built within the insurer's +Oscar full-stack technology platform.
The technology aims to drive better clinical outcomes by ensuring members are only engaged with the highest priority action for them.
“In healthcare, a lot of the activity is concentrated in a fairly small population, and a lot of the utilization of customer service is concentrated in that portion of members or patients who have a lot of conditions that they need help with,” Duncan Greenberg, vice president of product for Oscar Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
For each of those health issues, Greenberg said there is an opportunity for +Oscar to support its members and guide them to relevant services. Greenberg said the new technology aims to help patients or members with complex needs who may need more communication without inundating others with too much information, which can lead to lower levels of engagement.
Built within +Oscar’s campaign builder, the next best actions engine will help eliminate decision fatigue and enable members to focus on the most important decision or action.
Members can receive communications through multiple channels including email, in-app messages, push notifications, SMS, letters, faxes and phone calls.
“Since our founding, we have been providing members with what we think is a unique experience,” said Mario Schlosser, co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “Because we control our tech-stack from end-to-end, we’re able to build tools that allow us to respond to consumer pain points and provide a less complicated experience.”
Founded in 2012, Oscar Health served 1 million members as of March 31.
Since the launch of the new messaging framework, almost 50% of members have engaged in a campaign communication with engagement rates of 48%, according to the company. The prioritization framework has helped drive a 20% increase in member engagement, while Oscar has also increased the volume of campaigns targeting members by 40%.
Oscar has around 200 active campaigns that look for specific members or patients who would benefit from some type of communication, Greenberg told Fierce Healthcare.
“That could be seeing that there’s a member who hasn't had a visit with a primary care provider in a long time and has chronic conditions that we've detected from various clinical signals that we think need to be managed actively,” Greenberg said. “We can outreach them through any of the engagement channels that we have available to us.”
Oscar may contact patients and members using a secure message from a nurse or a phone call. If a patient needs to be routed to a provider, the insurer could use a high-touch approach such as a push notification for a member who uses the mobile app.
“We've hooked up this communication configuration layer to a dozen different engagement channels that we have across all of our different touch points with members so that each of these things becomes an opportunity for us to engage,” Greenberg said.