Digital health apps and websites saw rapid growth over the past few years, equipping consumers with a wealth of options for self-managing their health and wellness goals. More than 350,000 apps became available to consumers since the start of 2021, from guided fitness programs to symptom checkers to medication reminders. Consumers have capitalized on this rapid market growth, with 63% of adults reporting having engaged with digital health apps in 2022.
As consumers become more comfortable accessing patient portals and health apps, health plans have several opportunities to leverage personalized, digital health programs to address performance goals.
How Do Member Apps and Portals Improve Health Outcomes?
Health apps and patient portals provide consumers with relevant tools and resources for self-managing their health. These programs range from specialized wellness apps that address specific goals or conditions to comprehensive health portals devoted to helping consumers improve their overall wellbeing. In either case, their popularity has contributed to invaluable research into member behaviors and program effectiveness.
In a randomized field experiment conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and New York University, researchers discovered that digital health apps and web portals improve clinical outcomes. Alongside improving chronic disease management and overall wellness goals, these digital health programs proved effective at motivating users to build healthy habits.
An important takeaway from the study was the importance of allowing users to self-manage their behaviors. Giving members control over how fast or slow they improve health outcomes allows them to maintain autonomy and develop routines that work for their lifestyles. Users that feel coerced, shamed or forced to complete specific activities show lower levels of engagement with programs.
Where digital health programs excel is at giving health plan members a single dashboard for tracking and reaching their health goals. When supported with the right tools, resources and encouragement, members learn to self-regulate their own health behaviors and activities without unnecessary intervention from plans or providers.
What Are the Operational Benefits to Digital Health Apps?
Health plans face several federal and state challenges to deliver high quality, coordinated and equitable care members on limited budgets. Refining member engagement and care gap initiatives to improve a members’ abilities to self-manage health conditions and behaviors frees up resources to address these challenges. By equipping members with comprehensive digital health apps, plans can reduce reliance on high-touch outreach and foster continuous quality improvement interventions.
Streamline Performance Initiatives
Digital health portals can unite care gap, quality performance and member experience goals under one cost-effective tool. With the right customizability and integrations, plans can leverage these member-centric tools to address high-value quality measures more efficiently, including Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) scores.
For example, a plan may determine that improving preventive screening rates will unlock the next Star Rating and reduce healthcare costs. By adding preventive screening activities to members’ health portals, the plan can guide members to the right health activities and increase quality scores in a more sustainable manner.
When paired with relevant incentives and omnichannel outreach, health portals accelerate gap closure initiatives to have the strongest impact on plan performance. Improving member health outcomes also contributes to better member experiences, retention rates and CAHPS scores.
Deliver Continuous Engagement
While direct mail and phone calls provide powerful nudges to encourage members to close specific care gaps, member health portals offset the cost of these channels with continuous engagement. By encouraging members to log into health apps regularly, plans reinforce healthy habits and make members more self-sufficient. Overtime, members will become more equipped to self-manage health conditions and engage in their care without constant interactions with their plans.
Plans can mobilize over half of their populations to use digital health apps when they support programs with:
- Omnichannel outreach
- Accurate contact information
- Preferred communication channels
- Streamlined onboarding processes
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- Rewards and incentives
Build Comprehensive Records
Member portals act as a direct window to patient experiences. Plans can surface surveys directly to members to better understand their challenges and update member records. With proper tracking tools, plans can collect, organize and analyze this data in comprehensive member records in real time. Building these data collection strategies into the groundwork of a member portal enables health plans to rapidly address the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) health equity and whole-person care goals.
Plans can leverage member portals to identify members’:
- Social determinants of health (SDOH)
- Race, ethnicity and language (REL)
- Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)
- Contact information
- Preferred communication channels
Components of an Effective Member-centric Health Program
Members have hundreds of thousands of health apps and websites to choose from to help them reach their health goals. To stand out among the competition, plans need to ensure its app and health portals meet industry standards for success. Incorporating the right functionality and design philosophies into a program allows plans to accelerate program adoption and plan performance.
Elements that health plans should look for in a digital health program include:
- Scalability: A program should be supported with a standard, white-labeled format that can be scaled to a variety of population sizes and plan types. Standardizing a program enables plans to streamline the onboarding process, guide members more efficiently and implement new features over time.
- Personalization: Providing tools that are relevant to a member’s needs is important for motivating them to complete healthy activities. While a program should scale easily for new populations, it should also allow plans to customize it to meet member’s needs, such as relevant health actions and robust reward options. Programs that allow plans to automate these adjustments also free up IT and support resources.
- Comprehensive functionalities: Developing individual apps for every chronic condition, wellness goal and health status is overwhelming for members. Instead, consider a comprehensive health program that provides members with one-stop for all their health needs. Plans can address multiple performance goals by incorporating health action plans, rewards, educational materials, wellness trackers, health assessments and surveys under one solution.
- Easy onboarding: Educating members about program capabilities and providing clear instructions on how to register is vital for program success. Plans can improve utilization rates by leveraging omnichannel outreach, support teams and SSO to guide members through the onboarding process.
- Data collection: These programs enable plans to rapidly collect member data to identify health statuses, SDOH, REL, SOGI, communication preferences and member sentiments. Programs should support internal survey capabilities and allow members to self-report health and wellness information. The ability to review and filter member data within standard reports also enables plans to develop strategies to improve member experiences and program effectiveness.
- Privacy and security: Underneath every component should be strict compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements to secure and protect personal health information. Plans should identify programs that are Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) certified, one of the highest industry standards for security compliance.
Use One Tool to Address Plan Performance Goals
As digital health app and web portal adoption rates continue to rise, health plans are in a powerful position to adapt their quality and engagement strategies to the digital frontier. Designing member-centric programs with the right functionality allows plans to consolidate engagement strategies, reaching quality benchmarks, reduce redundancies and optimize budgets. Partnering with an experienced member engagement vendor is vital for achieving your performance targets in a competitive industry landscape.
Through Personal Health Assistant (PHA), Healthmine’s member-centric tool, plans in all markets can guide members to the right health activities with white-labeled mobile apps and web portals. These customizable programs enable members to access personalized health action plans, relevant rewards and health education materials from the palm of their hands. Supported with a HiTRUST-certified infrastructure, PHA allows members to securely share personal health information and report health activity completion directly to plans.
Foster sustainable member engagement and address your performance goals with PHA. Contact us for a demo.