3 Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Member Rewards Program

Not all members are intrinsically motivated to close care gaps. That means, they need an extra nudge to take action, and that’s where reward programs come in. By offering members incentives to complete provider visits, screenings, surveys or health education, plans help members get the quality care that they need — increasing gap closure and return on investment.

However, a successful rewards program requires a comprehensive strategy. We’ll share the most common pitfalls our health plan experts notice when evaluating member engagement and rewards programs. Plus, you’ll learn how to avoid these mistakes with proven, cost-effective solutions.

The most common pitfalls in member rewards programs

1. Sending generic messaging to all members

It’s common for plans to use a one-size-fits-all communication and rewards strategy for all members either to reduce workload and cut costs or because they lack the framework to tailor outreach at scale. This can lead to a lack of engagement from members with critical care gaps and wasted resources on members who are already proactive with their healthcare.  

A personalized engagement strategy makes the most out of your rewards budget by tailoring communications to resonate with each individual member and prioritizing communications to the members who need more support. Healthmine’s engagement strategy is backed by behavioral science data, and accounts for a member’s open care gaps, risk factors, engagement history (which informs how proactive and intrinsically motivated they are), and preferred language and communication channel to increase engagement and close care gaps. It’s just one of the ways Healthmine’s engagement strategy differs from other engagement vendors.  

With a smarter rewards program, you can spend strategically to support members who need extra motivation to take the next steps in their care.

2. Not coordinating across different teams using rewards

Both quality and risk teams use rewards to encourage members to take action to improve their health. However, these teams usually have different rewards strategies, even for the same health action. For example, quality and risk teams prioritize preventive visits at different times of year. A member may receive multiple communications nudging them to complete a health action at different times offering different reward values because these teams are disconnected. That means plans are potentially over-incentivizing members, and members are confused about what to do and how much they’ll earn.

Healthmine helps quality and risk teams streamline rewards programs by creating a centralized engagement strategy. Your quality and risk teams can still work independently and within their own budgets, but all teams are operating within a single rewards program, eliminating member abrasion associated with confusing outreach, differing incentive values and unnecessary costs associated with multiple rewards programs.  

3. Working with rewards vendors that create frustration for your members

It can feel easy to pass off rewards fulfillment to a third-party vendor. But this simple mistake could significantly impact your member satisfaction score and customer service costs. We hear it all the time — most vendor’s reward fulfillment usually takes weeks and can be unreliable, leading to angry members and frustrated calls to member outreach agents and erode the effectiveness of the rewards program in the future. This is an easily avoidable cost to improve a plan’s bottom line. Reduce the need for incoming questions or complaints and save dollars on customer service requests.  

Healthmine handles the end-to-end process of your rewards program — from creating a coordinated strategy to offering and fulfilling incentives right within the member app. We fulfill all digital rewards within 48 hours of completion to build trust with members and encourage them to complete more health actions. Not only does immediate reward fulfillment mean fewer incoming calls to your customer service representatives, but it means the likelihood the member continues to close care gaps is significantly higher.  

Case study: How our client leveraged rewards to increase risk revenue and lower costs

A regional Medicare Advantage plan struggled with low member engagement and low health risk assessment (HRA) completion rates. After carefully evaluating the plan’s challenges, Healthmine’s experts developed a comprehensive 12-month member engagement strategy that included personalized messaging and rewards.

This plan achieved a:

• 35% increase in HRA completion rate
• 47% increase in PCP visits
• 104% increase in colorectal cancer screenings

With messaging and rewards optimized for each member, this plan increased member motivation and improved their overall health by closing care gaps.

These engagement results led to a $1.5 million risk score accuracy improvement and $1 million in cost savings. Read the full case study.  

Build a rewards strategy that drives meaningful engagement

Our experts can help you create a rewards program that motivates members and is tailored to your plan’s budget and goals. We can incentivize our health actions to ensure that you’re making progress on the quality-based measures that matter most to your plan’s overall performance. Our rewards programs lead to a 93% increase in gap closure compared to message-driven member activation alone. Find out how we can help you. Contact us for a demo.