Drive better health outcomes through increased Medicare member participation in Annual Wellness Visits
SameSky Health hosted a webinar, Drive better health outcomes through increased Medicare member participation in Annual Wellness Visits, to discuss our unique, culturally tailored approach to engage Medicare Advantage members in completing Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs). A national health plan recently partnered with SameSky Health using the CultureGuide™ solution to build member trust, increase plan satisfaction, improve data collection and resource utilization, as well as increase wellness visits. Meredith Welsh, senior vice president of health operations for SameSky Health, presented several findings from the past 12 months. View the recording below.
Building trust and getting to know members drives better outcomes for them, and for health plans. CultureGuide™ from SameSky Health offers a nuanced, multimodal approach to help health plans advance health equity for all members. Collecting updated data and reengaging a member should be a personalized experience because self-reported data is extremely important when looking at health equity, identifying disparities, and driving personalized outreach that drives better outcomes. When partnering with a plan to engage with their members, there are specific steps taken to initially build trust and then carry that relationship on throughout the year. The goal is to welcome a member, build trust between the member and their health plan, and help members know their benefits.
The initial trust building process includes the welcome phase where we kick things off and start to build trust, the discovery phase where direct data collection efforts are focused on demographic information and social drivers of health, and the support phase where we connect members to their benefits and help them navigate tools and resources.
Once the initial trust building process is complete, we continue our efforts throughout the year. We focus on:
Annual Wellness Visits/Other Focus Pathways*:
Navigate members through primary care activities
Connect members to primary care providers
Encourage members to attend wellness visits, promote flu vaccine
Education:
Educate members on the importance of engaging their healthcare journey
Provide resources and information that is culturally nuanced
Experience:
Use Community Health Guides (live agents that speak and connect with members in 25+ languages)
Focus on member satisfaction
Get members their needed care quickly
Trust:
Continue to check in on members
Provide information throughout the year so the member feels supported and heard
Remind the member that you are there for them and you know who they are
Member Engagement Strategies
Member engagement improves when content is nuanced and the human touch is aligned with member needs and preferences. The best form of outreach is through a multimodal approach so you can meet members where they are. If you are able to drive a multimodal approach you are able to drive outcomes. Our current forms of outreach include texting, Virtual Health Assistant (Cognitive IVR), Community Health Guides (Live Agents), and email. There are different lived experiences for each member, so being able to communicate at a nuanced level personalizes the experience and drives better data collection for each member. Our top five data collection strategies include:
Asking small questions: Simply asking, “Is now a good time?” at the beginning of a call can change the trajectory of the conversation.
Framing the ask: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to requesting personal information. Appealing to different populations and adjusting to how questions may be perceived is an important consideration.
Providing clarity: A clean, well-defined introduction on how long the questions will take eases the member’s state of mind.
Training health plan partner teams: Provide clear guidance to the team and practice interactions and responses. Give them tools and the knowledge necessary to answer questions.
Creating culturally sensitive interactions: Learn the best cultural practices and then take the time to slow down and appreciate cultural norms.
Culturally Nuanced Results
In our recent partnership with a national health plan, we were able to use these strategies to build trust and engage Medicare Advantage members that were previously unengaged or hard-to-reach members, or the members that hadn’t engaged in a healthcare visit in 16+ months. We increased member satisfaction and data collection, guided members to their benefits and resources, and increased the number of wellness visits. Some of the biggest successes include:
48%+ of previously unengaged members attended a wellness visit.
47% of members were more likely to attend a wellness visit after using multimodal communications compared to using a single-modality outreach strategy.
62% of members who received multimodal outreach that included call, voicemail, text and email attended their annual wellness visits compared to 48% who only received text messages.
We were able to successfully engage more than 90% of this hard-to-reach population.
Members were 2.5x more likely to attend a wellness visit if they engaged with resources and participated in bidirectional engagement (click on links, etc.).
Over 30% of unique members identified one or more social determinants of health (SDOH) need.
Over 25% of members identified a behavioral health need.
We were able to build trust with an unengaged or hard-to-reach member population and guide them to proper resources, attend wellness visits, and increase outcomes. A multimodal communication approach personalizes the member experience, reduces member abrasion, increases health literacy, and empowers members to engage in the healthcare system. Members with no SDOH needs were 19% more likely to complete wellness visits than those with one or more SDOH needs, so being able to identify and solve the SDOH or behavior health needs first then allows for better AWV outcomes.
Overall, gathering updated member data and getting to know and understand your members will help to decrease barriers to health and allow members to better utilize their benefits. The results don’t happen overnight. The average time from the first outreach to the AWV date is 99 days, but there is an upward trend. The longer we can engage with members and work in partnership with health plans, the better information we gather, the better trust we build, and the better outcomes we create to drive health equity and reduce barriers to care.
*Focus Pathways: Individualized support can be added for diabetes care, prenatal/postpartum care, women's health, children's health, SDOH screening and navigation, behavioral health and substance use.
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