What is health plan member engagement?

What qualifies as “member engagement” when it comes to your Digital Care Management (DCM) solution? For clinical and administrative staff, engaging with members goes beyond metrics like daily app opens. Every touchpoint can help your care team better understand your members. So what is successful health plan member engagement?

Effectively engaging with health plan members empowers them to take actions that support their health and lifestyle goals. Using digital care management technology, care managers have more opportunities to interact with members by leveraging multiple communication channels. Digital health tools also generate key insights that can help care managers identify gaps in care and personalize member outreach. The ultimate goal is to modernize how members can communicate with their care managers and improve outcomes.

Ideally, member engagement metrics will serve two purposes: deliver insights into member health and help improve member satisfaction.

All four of these metrics provide helpful information about members and their current health. Care managers can see trends in this data over time, making it easier to see if a member’s health indicators are improving or worsening. This knowledge also gives care managers new opportunities for timely intervention—they can reach out to members when they first notice negative changes in member data or activity.

With digital care management, keeping track of member touchpoints is easier and more informative than tracking the number of phone calls made or noting the details of those calls. Members can use multiple communication channels to reach out to their care teams, like text-based messaging. Care managers can also send digital surveys and assessments to members as a way to check on their progress through a care program or uncover additional health needs. Some digital health solutions, including Wellframe, also offer informative articles about benefits and various health and wellness topics.

These digital capabilities can give your care teams deeper insights into member needs and potential care gaps. The information members reveal through these actions can also inform phone calls and other forms of outreach. Many members don’t think about going to their health plan for support. But making these tools and resources readily available can encourage members to engage with their health plans more reliably.

Health plan member engagement is about more than just communication. Successful member engagement can lead to better care outcomes, improved satisfaction, and even improve health literacy. One strategy to improve member reach and engagement is enabling member self-service.

With Wellframe’s Digital Care Management solution, members averaged 258 touchpoints per month. About 80% of these touchpoints are self-service actions, like setting and dismissing reminders, reading resource articles, answering surveys, and sending messages to care managers. Members can use a digital Member Resource Center to find more information about topics beyond care management. Nearly 30% of conversations in the Wellframe app are about something other than a clinical condition. With a resource center, care managers and customer service teams can send articles via chat, or members can search for topics themselves.

Digital engagement channels allow care managers to deliver more personalized and effective healthcare experiences to members. Before digital health solutions, only small portions of member populations could access care management. Digital tools help extend this service to more members, helping care managers deliver proactive and preventive care.