Addressing healthcare's biggest challenges will require payers and providers working together.
That's why the team at Aetna has spent the past several years investing in ways to bridge those trust gaps and better unite the two sides of the industry that are often at odds. And a new survey suggests that work is paying off.
Morning Consult polled 723 provider executives across multiple disciplines on Aetna's behalf, and found an average provider trust score of 6.1 on a scale of one to 10. By comparison, a similar poll conducted in the first quarter found a 5.4 trust score.
Thirty-eight percent of the providers surveyed gave health plans a score of eight or higher.
Katerina Guerraz, chief operating officer for Aetna, told Fierce Healthcare in an interview that this work is born out of a strategic pivot at the company in mid-2024, which established multiple key goals including a push to create a "frictionless experience" for providers.
"That was the defining point in the journey where we said we need to work differently with providers," she said.
Within that framework, several focus areas emerged: addressing administrative burdens, improving interoperability and harnessing the power of digital health. Providers consistently name administrative needs as their top challenge, making improvements there a key opportunity to rethink the existing dynamic.
More than half (58%) said submitting prior authorization requests posed a significant burden, while 42% point to re-entering patient information and 41% to submitting claims as major pain points.
Aetna leaned on technology to approach improvements in this arena, the insurer said. New solutions have supported time savings for providers, with more than 30% of those surveyed expecting to save more than an hour and 80% expecting to save at least 30 minutes.
Guerraz said that the insurer is bringing providers to the table as it builds out new standards for prior authorization and working with them, even in contracting discussions, around ways to streamline claims management.
Starting with some of these day-to-day administrative hassles served as a valuable foundation, Guerraz said. For example, with that trust built, Aetna could work with a provider to find ways to bundle multiple prior authorizations that could crop up on the patient's care path.
Addressing interoperability is also a key piece of the puzzle. Guerraz said she views interoperability as the "single thing that will transform the healthcare industry faster than anything else."
Sixty-eight percent of the surveyed providers said that interoperability and data integrity are the biggest challenge they face on the technology side. Nearly a third (29%) of the providers said that they view real-time patient data as the most important step an insurer could take to support their clinical work.
Close to half (47%) said they believe having access to these data would save them at least 10 minutes for each appointment.
Guerraz said addressing these data gaps has meant building the standards and then going provider by provider to determine what they need most. However, providers also need to be aware that addressing these data gaps requires investment from them, too.
In addition to the surveys, Aetna is bringing together leaders of major hospitals and health systems in forums to continue building a dialogue around where improvements are needed, she said.
Ultimately, the goal at the end of the day is to find ways for these efforts to be felt in the patient's journey, said Guerraz.
"If we can improve the provider experience, it will improve the patient experience," she said.