Challenge
Closing Gaps in Care With Annual Wellness Visits
Only 16% of Medicare recipients are seen for an annual wellness visit each year and a full 27% of Americans didn’t visit the doctor at all last year. Unfortunately, that numbers grows steadily with each younger generation and reasons for avoiding the doctor varying widely.
Studies show that members who get an annual wellness visit receive 62% more preventive screenings for chronic diseases than those who don’t. One innovative nation health plan recognized this opportunity and partnered with Icario to educate members to overcome obstacles standing in the way of seeing their doctor, increase scheduled annual wellness visits, and close additional gaps in care.
Process
Educate and Incentivize Members to Complete an Annual Wellness Visit
It’s not always easy to find motivation to visit the doctor when there’s nothing wrong. A multitude of reasons may be impacting an individual’s hesitancy to see a doctor—from a previous poor experience, scheduling conflicts, fear, and anything in between. Limiting the narrative to a single story would therefore have been ineffective against the health plan’s entire member population.
Icario’s approach for this health plan was to align a targeted strategy with information compiled from member data. The Icario team created specific member segmentation and designed messaging relevant to each member demographic. Using a combination of education and empathy, the program delivered messages that were targeted to each member’s perceived motivation for visiting the doctor.
10%
increase in annual wellness visits
18%
scheduled immediately
25%
claimed a reward
Lead With Data—Deliver the Human Element
Segment, Educate, Empathize, and Test
Traditional outreach companies may deliver a single, uniform outbound calling strategy to everyone without regard for how humans actually interact with each other. But we know one size doesn’t fit all and there’s more to the story. Icario took a more human approach, developing a dynamic health action program integrating smart interactive voice, customer service, a web element, as well as a rewards program to motivate people to take action.
Icario used the health plan’s data complemented by third-party behavioral research to craft unique program elements based off of life stage. This helped determine the most effective message, channel, and timing to drive an action-oriented experience. And we didn’t forget about human touch: empathy. Icario’s experts considered emotional as well as logistical factors when designing the interactive voice element to create a comfortable, welcoming experience for each person.
For example, we discovered that men with strong masculinity beliefs are half as likely as men with more moderate masculinity beliefs to receive preventive care. So, we crafted messaging specific to men addressing barriers relating to pride, and we crafted messages to women relating to previous experiences, time, cost, or value.
Then, we tested. Icario continually tests multiple segmentation strategies to discover what’s working well, and where there’s opportunities for improvement.
The annual wellness visit program recognized the unique characteristics and preferences of each member and initiated its proprietary scheduling software to optimize member availability through a dynamic, multimodal experience.
Results
Drive Better Health Outcomes by Closing Multiple Gaps in Care
Icario’s sophisticated data-led strategy considered extensive demographic and behavioral segments, integrated multiple channels, and in the end drove extraordinary results.
By simplifying the process, educating members and building in a rewards program, this health action program successfully encouraged members to get their annual wellness visit. In addition, the program resulted in more people receiving preventive screenings. A win-win for the health plan and their members.
