Changing Behavior – Examples

On the Express Scripts Consumerology Blog, I noticed a new entry this morning from Bob Nease (Chief Scientist) about changing behavior.  It points to two things – motivation and self-efficacy.  (What’s in it for me and do I believe I can be successful.)

There is an interesting study from the University of Michigan that he discusses, and he also provides some detail on one of their web pilots.  What the web study showed is that a simpler message led to more “click throughs”.  This is very similar to what we see in the voice channel of communications.

If I call you and tell you there is an opportunity to save money with your health benefit, you are likely to go to the next step or transfer to hear more.  On the other hand, if I tell you a lot in the message, I might get a much lower click-through (or continuation or transfer) rate.

Since ultimately, I care about conversion in the claims data (i.e., did the patient really change behavior) these metrics are nice proxies but don’t mean much.  I care about did the patient and their physician actually act on the recommendation or the opportunity to save money.  I posted that as a comment on the blog so hopefully Bob can add that detail.

We have clearly seen this in some of our programs where we would rather qualify them on the phone and then transfer them leading to a higher close rate than simply drive up transfers.