Overcome roadblocks to conduct meaningful changes in member habits with behavioral science. Behavioral modification has the power to refine member outreach to deliver the most impactful messages when it matters most, but it is not as complex or intimidating as it sounds. By applying several basic research principles, plans can tap into cost-effective tactics for improving plan performance.
Here are five common behavioral modification questions to get plans started thinking about how to use scientific tools to optimize member engagement.
Why Should Health Plans Care about Behavioral Modification?
Behavioral modification uses evidence-based techniques to identify what motivates members to complete healthy activities. Plans can use behavioral strategies to refine engagement and create long-lasting change in member behaviors, including:
- Motivating members to close care gaps
- Improving self-management skills and health literacy
- Increasing responses to surveys and health risk assessments while reducing abrasion
- Building trust by speaking to members based on their language, channel preferences and identified barriers
- Reducing reliance on emergency room services
Is Behavioral Modification Cost-Effective?
By applying behavioral science principles to engagement strategies, plans can increase the effectiveness of member outreach while reducing the need for generic, duplicative and costly communications. Many techniques are also easy to apply without overburdening staff or draining resources. Over time, these techniques help members develop healthy habits and lower medical costs.
How Can Plans Track Behavioral Modification Efforts?
Health plans can measure the effectiveness of behavioral modification techniques by closely tracking member reactions to different touchpoints, outreach and messaging components. Carefully adjusting content and design elements with different behavioral principles allows plans to test the impact of these changes on campaign metrics, such as open, bounce, response and click-through rates. Ideally, all metrics should be housed in a central database to help teams also track the impact on care gaps, member experiences, risk identification and quality scores. A platform like Healthmine’s Quality Relationship ManagementTM (QRMTM) consolidates plan analytics and engagement tools to facilitate faster responses.
How Long Does It Take to See Results?
How fast plans receive feedback on outreach will vary based on the specific techniques used, but real-time data analytics enable plans to surface insights faster and hasten their ability to test different strategies. The more comprehensive data a plan has to analyze, the more effectively it can monitor behavioral modification tactics. Partnering with behavioral scientists also allows plans to build long-term strategies that include time to conduct research, analyze data and test new approaches.
How Hard Is It to Start Using Behavioral Science?
Getting started with behavioral modification is as easy as applying a few simple principles to member-facing communications and tracking responses over time. Some principles are even commonplace marketing best practices, and plans may be using them without being aware of it. To take an active approach to behavioral modification, plans will want to segment populations, test different principles, analyze results and adjust based on this analysis.
Partner with Behavioral and Engagement Strategist
Scoping and launching behavioral modification strategies does require plans to invest time, resources and staff toward new areas. With teams already focused on addressing risk, quality and financial challenges, adding on another set of goals without the proper support can limit the effectiveness of these strategies.
At Healthmine, our behavioral scientists use research and years of experience to refine member outreach to deliver the strongest impact on plan performance. We take on the challenge of segmenting, analyzing and engaging member populations so plans can focus on executing other priorities. Supported by real-time analytics and omnichannel outreach tools, plans can pair evidence-based strategies with the appropriate engagement technology to have a powerful impact on member behaviors.
Enable members to develop new, healthy habits by unlocking the power of integrated engagement tools and behavioral science. Contact us for a demo.
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