Tag Archives: Engagement

Our Unreasonable Expectation For Devices And Apps

June 2, 2014 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I was reading an article the other day about devices like FitBit and their use within corporate wellness programs. One of the questions it was asking was why use them when people abandon them after a while.  I found this great chart from Endeavour Partners in their whitepaper which looks a lot like an adherence curve.  They say that 1/3 of people abandon their devices within 6 months which makes it a hard investment for anyone.  Image

 

It’s the same question you might ask around mobile apps.  While this chart shows that Americans install almost 33 apps, the questions is how long they use them.

Image

(Source: http://www.statista.com/chart/1435/top-10-countries-by-app-usage/)

According to Flurry, most apps peak within 3 months, and they show that health and fitness app retention is only 30% after 90-days. Again, that doesn’t make you want to invest a lot of money in a mobile app.  But, there are lots of reports out there telling us that people want to use mobile to communicate with their providers, track calories, and do lots of other health related tasks.  (see RuderFinn report, see IMS report, see Pew report)

So, what gives?  Do we have unreasonable expectations?  I would say yes.

We live in a ADD culture where people are constantly multi-tasking.  People want things that evolve and constantly change.  It’s the same reason we don’t want the same experience every single day.  It’s the reason that you’ve seen people from gaming coming into healthcare.  They understand how to keep people engaged over time.

Whether you want to picture it as a customer journey or different phases, the reality is that messaging needs to evolve with the consumer.  If you got the same letter every month, at some point, you don’t even pay any attention to it.  At some point, you wouldn’t even open it.

When I worked in healthcare communications, it was the same challenge from a strategy perspective.  How would we coordinate communications across channels?  What would the first message say versus the fifth message?  How do you avoid message or channel fatigue?

It’s the same thing in the digital or device world.  So, I ask the question…do we have unreasonable expectations about these tools by thinking that we can put them out there and sustain use of them?  I think so.  We need an evolving, constantly changing strategy about content, community, functionality, etc. to keep engagement sustained.

Healthcare
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The EveryMove 100 Ranks Health Insurance Companies…On Engagement and Empowerment

December 29, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

Engagement is such an essential part of healthcare.  I’ve talked about that many times and feel very passionate about how important engagement is to changing behavior and empowering consumers.  
 
I hadn’t had time to look at it when it first came out, but I finally got a chance to click on the press release from EveryMove which is a Sandbox and Blues sponsored company focused on health rewards and incentives.  
 
They put out the list of the top 100 health insurance companies in the US based on how well they engage and empower consumers – EveryMove 100 Health Insurance Index™ (https://everymove.org/everymove-100). In theory, if you could buy from any plan in any state in the exchange, this would be really helpful in selecting a plan.  Of course, as a researcher, I’d love to see some of the core data from a similar group of consumers to show how their engagement varied as they moved from one plan to another.  
 
They look at over 50 data points including:
  • mobile-friendly websites
  • mobile apps and app store rankings
  • self-service tools
  • incentive program offerings
  • community involvement
  • commitment to social engagement
  • consumer satisfaction
 The Top 10 include:
1.     Cigna 
2.     Kaiser Permanente of California 
3.     Premera Blue Cross 
4.     Humana 
5.     Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield 
6.     Independence Blue Cross 
7.     Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina 
8.     Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois 
9.     CareFirst 
10.   BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
 
The bottom 10 (of the top 100) include:
90. Fidelis Care
91. Highmark BCBS
92. BCBS of VT
93. BCBS of ND
94. Rocky Mountain Health Plans
95. Concordia Plan Services
96. Molina Healthcare
97. PacificSource Health Plans
98. AvMed Health Plans
99. Vantage Health Plan
100. Lovelace Health Plan
 
Since Cigna was the first company in the payer space (that I know of) to have a Chief Experience Officer, perhaps this shouldn’t be a big surprise that they rank so highly here.  
Healthcare
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Why It’s So Hard To Improve Consumer Engagement In Healthcare?

March 11, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

I spend a lot of my personal and professional time trying to figure out how to better engage consumers in healthcare.  If you can’t engage them, you can’t improve outcomes.

Never mind the fact that people experience about 5,000 messages a day so you have to cut through that clutter.

Even if we do cut through the clutter, people are busy living their lives.  They’re worried about their family.  They’re worried about the economy.  They’re trying to keep food on the table.  They are generally overwhelmed with too little sleep and too much stress.

But, let’s even assume that you can cut through the clutter and get them to listen, you still struggle with getting a person at a time when they are open to change.  These “golden moments” require them to see value in the change and feel like the short-term effort is worth the long-term gain.  This “value exchange” doesn’t often exist.  And, with 30% variance in the healthcare system, people often don’t trust the system.

Even with all that in mind, people still don’t engage.  They don’t get flu shots.  They don’t fill their medications.  They don’t understand the messages that are delivered to them.

Here’s a quick image I created for a presentation later this week.

Consumer

A few of the sources for this are:

Books / Articles, Care Management, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Research
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Less Than 1/3rd Of Health Insurers Very Confident In Their Big Data Value To Consumers

February 6, 2013 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

With all the discussions these days on Big Data and how to use information to create insights and wisdom, I was really shocked when I looked back at this PWC survey from 2011.  In it, less than 1/3rd of health insurers were very confident in their use of informatics to add value around case management, disease management, wellness, and consumer health tools.  WHAT???

This seems crazy to me.  In this interconnected world where everyone is talking about connected devices, mHealth, and ENGAGEMENT, health insurers are in the optimal position to leverage their data to provide insights, to provide transparency, to create algorithms, to be preventative in their actions, etc.  Maybe their technology platforms are too old?  Maybe they’re too silo’d?  I’m not sure.  But, I find this an interesting arbitrage opportunity.

With a system that integrates data from claims, labs, patient reported sources, HRAs, and biometrics, you can add value by creating a personalized patient experience that adapts with their needs.

Clinical Informations for Care Mgmt

Care Management, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Methodology, Research
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