Healthcare Insurance Research

Member Communications

Healthcare plans can be complicated and hard to understand. Healthcare insurance terminology can be daunting to the employee who does not speak that language on a daily basis. Trends forcing consumers to move from an entitlement mentality to one where they have more personal choices, either for individual or consumer-driven plans, means they will need good and timely information to make sound decisions.

Members have the right to clear communication of their benefits, how to file a claim, how a plan works, who they can contact should they need help. Their experience should give them total "peace of mind", knowing that they are getting the best care possible within the structure of their plan and that they have help with getting that care.

In like measure, employers have the right to the "peace of mind" of knowing that their employees are being kept informed and that they (employers) can trust that they are getting full value for their investment in their employees' health care.

Member communication is crucial to providing that “peace of mind.” Questions may include:

What are the best ways to communicate with members? Internet? Direct mail? Seminars?
How important is member communications to employers? How much do they attach to member communication in the choice of carriers?
How do brokers view the importance of member communications? How do they prefer to work with you to disseminate that information?
Is the language and terminology of your materials easily understood by members? How can it be made more understandable?
Are members making an effort to learn? What can you do to enhance their learning?
Do Explanation of Benefits (EOB) forms work? How can they be made better?
How do members use ID cards? Are they easy to use?
What constitutes effective Pre-enrollment materials? Provider directories? Formularies?
Will members use an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system? How important is personal contact?
How do we advertise for Individual plans? What is the best message? Media?
How does your member communication stack up with that of your competitors? What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of your communications versus the communications of your competitors? How can you differentiate your communications from the communications of your competitors?

To get answers to these and other questions, contact us for a proposal.