Article On Silverlink Communications

The October 2008 issue of ADVANCE for Health Information Executives contains a nice article about Silverlink Communications by Robert Mitchell. Here are a few items from the article:

• It focuses on our Adaptive HealthComm Science approach which brings decision sciences to the area of driving healthcare behaviors. [This is what leading consumer companies, credit card companies, and gaming companies use to understand consumers.]
  • “Adaptive HealthComm Science looks at microsegments of the member population to try different interventions with different populations — all standing against control groups and measurements of what works best. It then adapts, learns and tries again. “The communication system continually learns and automates its processes so that it is capturing new data and learning along the way from those interactions. It is consistent and can be measured.”
    
    • It is amazing to see how much programs can be improved over relatively short periods of time by rapidly testing isolated variables to find the right solution for each microsegment of the population.
      
  • One of my favorite examples from my past was simply using stamps turned at an angle on a letter to improve the rate at which direct mail was opened. It looked more like a human had hand licked each stamp rather than a machine which put the stamp on perfectly each time.
    
• It talks about the ability to do on the call calculations and dynamic pathing on the core automated calling platform.
  • On-the-call calculations: If you have 3 drugs to refill, but you only choose two of them then it can tell you what your copay is. Or, if you tell the caller your weight, it can calculate the difference from a prior weight it had collected.
  • Dynamic pathing: Based on answers you give, the call is intelligent enough to serve up different content to the member and/or route you to a different group of live agents based on rules.

“We’ve invested heavily in people, technology, processes and a methodology that continuously improves to maximize the effectiveness of health care communications,” Stan Nowak, CEO and co-founder of Silverlink, said. “Over the next few years, changes in the way health care stakeholders communicate with patients and health plan members will be one of the keys to lowering health care costs while driving consumer affinity.”

“To the consumer, health plan products are largely undifferentiated on the basis of benefits or network, and consumers experience their health plan almost exclusively through the communications they receive from the plan,” Nowak continued. “Health care organizations have an opportunity to clearly differentiate themselves through proactive and personalized communications, improving their members’ experiences with each interaction, and earning consumer trust and affinity. In essence, for health plans, communications is their product.”