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How to Address Changes in Patient Engagement and Motivate Flu Vaccination Fulfillment

Posted on by mPulse Team

Flu season is coming back around, and in a post-COVID world, that means changes in how members engage when it comes to being vaccinated. Lingering perspectives related to vaccine hesitancy may influence members’ reluctance to be vaccinated for the flu despite vaccinations being even more critical to their continued health. Health plans, providers, and pharmacies will have to work harder this year to ensure their health consumers are vaccinated and protected against the flu than they have in years past.

In the 2022–23 flu season, vaccination coverage with ≥1 dose of flu vaccine was 57.4% among children 6 months through 17 years, similar to the 2021–22 flu season (57.8%), and flu vaccination coverage among adults ≥18 years was 46.9%, a decrease of 2.5 percentage points from the prior season (49.4%).

With the unpredictability of flu severity from season to season, outreach and patient engagement to provide information and identify resources for access to vaccinations is integral to a health plan’s ability to proactively communicate with diverse populations through targeted content.

Annually, unvaccinated individuals will cost the healthcare system over $10.4 billion and an additional $17.6 Billion in lost worker productivity.

Flu vaccine patient education can help to prevent:

  • 5 million flu-related illnesses
  • 7 million flu-associated medical visits
  • 105k flu-associated hospitalizations, and
  • 3k flu-associated deaths 

So, what can the healthcare industry do to combat this? With tools like behavioral science, interactive flu vaccine education, and conversational AI at their disposal, it’s possible to see significant increases in flu vaccination rates among members.

Let’s take a closer look at why.

The Foundation: Science of Human Behavior

Let’s start with the basics for any outreach program we run: behavioral science. In this mega-study conducted by The University of Pennsylvania and Walmart, 22 different behavioral science techniques were tested. These 22 varied techniques were embedded into messages delivered through SMS to over 650,000 Walmart pharmacy patients to determine which boosted vaccination rates the highest. Overall, including all these techniques increased flu vaccination rates by an average of 6.7% over a three-month follow-up period.

However, the endowment effect was the most effective technique, which encouraged patients to visit Walmart for a flu vaccine reserved specifically for them. By telling a person a particular flu shot is ‘reserved for you’ and already belongs to them, the vaccine becomes a tangible thing of value that they own. The Endowment Effect is an emotional bias to put a higher value on owned objects. This approach also uses the technique of Loss Aversion, a bias that makes us care nearly twice as much about avoiding loss than receiving an equivalent gain. In this case, if you don’t claim your flu shot, you’ll lose something you own.

We use behavioral science in every program we deploy for our clients, but this study specifically and the endowment effect itself was the basis with which we built our flu vaccination solution for the 2022-2023 flu season. What UPenn and Walmart didn’t have, though, was the following few factors that pushed our flu program beyond even this study.

Streaming flu vaccine patient education

With so much flu vaccine hesitancy in our post-COVID world, flu vaccine patient education about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations is a necessary step, and departing from the mundane pamphlets and brochures of the past by utilizing streaming health content is an extremely effective way to do this.

fotonovela to help improve flu vaccine patient education

The content we’ve produced for flu vaccine education is a series of fotonovelas, which are auto-forwarding image-based stories with a visual interface similar to the stories feature on Instagram. Fotonovelas are ultimately a health literacy tool, but at the same time, they make learning fun and easy (80% of learners on our platform report liking or loving the fotonovela content type).

In this specific flu fotonovela below, the characters featured resonate with diverse audiences, the storylines detailed transcend linguistic and cultural barriers to deliver essential information, and the tone provides empathy and support on the path toward the desired call to action. The best part is that health patients who view a Fotonovela are 72% more likely to get vaccinated.

2-Way conversations uncover barriers

Having 2-way conversations allows you to gather insights about your members that can inform future communication.

  • What is their sentiment toward the program and plan?
  • Why haven’t they been vaccinated?
  • Have they already been vaccinated, and we don’t know?

Knowing why they haven’t been vaccinated allows the plan to respond with education and resources to assist.

  • Do they need help figuring out where to go? Send them the information to their nearest pharmacy.
  • What about if they’re not sure they need a flu vaccination? Send them a Fotonovela to educate them!

Multiple channels, multiple languages

The UPenn and Walmart mega-study tested SMS messages, but why stop there? A large part of an effective engagement strategy is meeting members where they are. As such, our solution includes SMS, IVR, and email channels. Take the concept of meeting members where they are one step further, and you’ll get the ability to deploy this vaccination solution in both English and Spanish. This means reaching more of your population in the way they want to communicate.

Tackle flu early and effectively

The CDC recommends that everyone six months and older, especially people at higher risk, should get a flu vaccine annually to reduce their risk of contracting seasonal flu, alleviate the severity of symptoms, and decrease the likelihood of experiencing major health complications if infected. The importance of each individual vaccinating against the flu needs to be communicated to members through targeted, succinct, and easily understandable materials delivered through channels to reach them where they are most apt to respond and be motivated to act. Studies have found that patients who are informed and effectively motivated are also more likely to adhere to their treatment recommendations.

Our flu vaccination solution

mPulse Mobile’s flu vaccination solution uses proven behavioral science, dynamic content, and an omnichannel approach to overcome common vaccine barriers and get more members vaccinated. With over 15M Flu vaccination touchpoints sent to Medicaid, Medicare, and Commercial members by mPulse in the last two years using its 2-way Natural Language Understanding platform, we have learned from millions of past vaccine conversations in both Spanish and English. We use behavioral science in a relatable and quick experience and employ Fotonovelas to empower members to act. We can help overcome common barriers and resistance by listening for vaccine readiness.

For more information on this flu vaccination solution and a live demo on how we can improve your flu vaccine patient education, register for our webinar, Double Your Vaccination Rates for Your Health Population.

Frictionless Healthcare, Part 2: Using Reciprocity to Increase Motivation

Posted on by Eden Brownell

Behavioral science describes the study of behavior through experimentation and observation. Behavioral scientists study when and why individuals engage in specific behaviors by examining the impact of factors such as conscious thoughts, motivation, social influences, contextual effects, and habits. This week, we will look at how reciprocity can be used in healthcare design and content.

________________________

Dear reader, have you ever wondered what could make you not want to drop a hotel towel on the floor after the first use? Well, a card in a hotel bathroom might do it if it were written the right way. My good friend, Robert Cialdini, and his colleagues investigated this (okay we aren’t really good friends, but a girl can dream, right?) by testing multiple different card appeals to see which would lead to the highest rate of behavior change. They found that neither the basic environmental-protection message urging us to save some no name penguin (although, feel free to name him whichever way you like) nor the message with cooperation appeal could hold a candle to a different kind of push – our need to reciprocate. 

 The most effective way to induce the desired response was to give the donation first then ask a guest to cooperate in this effort. The message with reciprocation appeal, giving first read: 

 “WE’RE DOING OUR PART FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. CAN WE COUNT ON YOU? Because we are committed to preserving the environment, we have made a financial contribution to a nonprofit environmental protection organization on behalf of the hotel and its guests. If you would like to help us in recovering the expense, while conserving natural resources, please reuse your towels during your stay”.

 This method reported almost a 47% success rate, which was significantly greater than the cooperation condition. Why? Because the hotel donated money first on behalf of its guests and only then asked them to join in on it. You didn’t need to reuse your towel, but you felt sort of obliged to. If you didn’t recycle (help them claim the money back), well, you would probably feel a little bad, which is reciprocity in a nutshell. 

Reciprocity in Healthcare

But what does this story have to do with healthcare? The principle of reciprocity means you are more likely to comply with a request if it comes from someone who has previously done something for you, and in healthcare, obtaining compliance is a constant goal. Whether it’s urging members to get their preventive screenings or convincing patients to diet and exercise to bring down their A1C, driving healthy action is important to plans and providers, and reciprocity is a powerful tool to get this done. Let’s review one other case study before taking a deeper look at this in healthcare setting.

Want to learn more about using reciprocity in healthcare? Watch the on-demand webinar » 

 In this next example, the British Behavioral Insights Team joined forces with the NHS Blood and Transplant, the Department of Health, Government Digital Services, and DVLA to investigate a way to increase signups to the organ donor registry. It ended up being more complex than expected and was one of the biggest trials in the history of the UK public sector.

 Given the subject of this blog, you might have already figured they used reciprocity in a clever way to reach their goal. They inserted short phrases with various behavioral science techniques embedded into an existing vehicle tax webpage, and linked it to the organ donor register, which appeared after a user had finished obtaining their vehicle tax. The best-performing behavioral science technique (surprise, surprise) was the reciprocity appeal, which outperformed the existing webpage by roughly 100,000 registrants per year. Here is how it read: 

 “If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so, please help others.”

 Oftentimes, healthcare organizations can approach a lot of healthcare problems with an eye towards getting members to provide them with information (even though they have a tendency not to). The trick is to flip this process by providing the member with something valuable first and encouraging them to think about these issues on their own before we ask them to share their thoughts and feelings, which is called value first design.

 In the context of digital product experiences, users are more likely to engage with your product if you first provide value to them. They’ll be more likely to trust you and reciprocate. This concept is even more important when you’re about to ask for something big from your users, such as signing up for something or closing a healthcare gap. In part 3 of this blog series, we’ll dive into the specific architecture of outreach and how to build in reciprocity by combining behavior science and streaming health education to create a value first design.

7 Ways to Use Streaming Content in Your Health Communication, Part 1

Posted on by mPulse Team

In healthcare, engaging health consumers effectively is becoming increasingly complex. Health plans, providers, hospital systems, and pharmacies deploy various communication strategies – from emails and text messages to phone calls and live events – all to motivate health consumers toward better health decisions. However, the key to capturing attention and prompting action often lies in overcoming knowledge, skill, or motivation gaps. This is where streaming health education, a nuanced form of digital health content, emerges as a vital tool.

But getting someone to stop, pay attention, and act can be challenging. There are many barriers that stand in the way. When one or more of those barriers reflects knowledge, skill, or motivation gaps, streaming health education might supply the nudge that helps move them in the right direction.

Streaming health content, a sophisticated approach to health literacy, merges the strengths of digital content strategy, behavioral science, and instructional design to craft impactful learning experiences. It’s not just about delivering information; it’s about engaging health consumers through diverse formats like animated videos, interactive activities, and expert-led courses. This post delves into seven innovative ways healthcare organizations can harness streaming health content to drive critical health behaviors, starting with the captivating storytelling format of fotonovelas.

As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of digital health content, it’s clear that the right health content can educate and empower consumers, leading to better health outcomes and adherence to care plans.

Nudging your members to act with streaming health education

What is streaming health education? It’s our take on health literacy promotion. It borrows from the best of digital content strategy, behavior science, and instructional design to create powerful learning experiences for your members.

From short, animated videos and interactive activities to media-rich online lessons and courses taught by leading health experts, there are many different and innovative ways to create and provide content to your health consumers.

In this post, we break down 7 ways healthcare organizations can use digital health content in their engagement programs to drive essential health behaviors, starting with fotonovelas.

Use Fotonovelas to Encourage Flu Vaccinations

Over 3 million Americans get the flu yearly, and the cost to the healthcare system and society in general adds up to a whopping 11.2 billion dollars a year. This is a great reason to educate members on flu vaccinations, which can be done well through fotonovelas, which are character-based stories told through photos or illustrations.

Example of a flu fotonovela included in our flu vaccination solution where health consumers are educatedIn this flu fotonovela, which is one of the four included in our flu vaccination solution, health consumers are educated on why a flu shot matters and common barriers and misconceptions related to flu vaccination. At the end, they’re given an easy resource for scheduling their shot.

It’s ultimately a health literacy tool, but at the same time, it makes learning fun and easy. Behavioral Strategist, Eden Brownell, explained the reason for the success of fotonovelas on the Pharmacy Friends podcast. “The perceived effort is lower. You can provide a large amount of information in a large text message, or you can bundle it up into a fotonovela. [In a fotonovela] it’s broken up. They’re able to see the progression they’re making through the story, which provides them with a sense of accomplishment, and the way it’s being delivered feels easier. When people feel that something is easier, they’re more likely to like it.”

And we find that fotonovelas are certainly well-liked. 80% of learners on our platform report liking or loving the fotonovela content type.

Interactive Content to Promote Medication Adherence

20-30% of medication prescriptions are never filled. Almost 50% of prescriptions are not taken as prescribed. It’s hard for a medicine to work of you don’t take it.

But then again, it’s hard to get your members to abide by their medication regimen if you aren’t addressing barriers to compliance and educating them on the importance of medication adherence. That’s where our second content piece comes in.

Interactive content can do well to educate and motivate health consumers to follow through on their prescriptions. In this series of interactive activities, members gain important knowledge on why and how to follow this critically important part of their care plans – all easily integrated into med adherence and medication management campaigns.

When the member or patient arrives at the interactive content, they can decide which barrier or medication type applies to them and read through the information at their own pace skipping anything they don’t feel addresses their specific situation. And a program like this with content infused has been shown to increase refill rates by 14%!

Interactive health content example to educate and motivate health consumers to follow through on their prescriptions

Using Animations to Educate on the Proper Use of the ER

A recent study from UnitedHealth Group estimated that members going to the emergency room for non-emergencies costs the health system $32 billion annually. Ouch.

But a short video on the proper use of urgent care versus emergency rooms is an excellent example of utilizing animations to educate your health consumers. Able to be sent through text or email or placed on a website or portal, animations are a fun and engaging way to educate. This animation is a prime example of education leading to reduced cost and better healthcare decisions for both the member and the plan, and it’s also highly likely to get your members chuckling. Watch the below animation to see what we mean!

In Part 2…

Health content is aimed at driving healthy actions and educating someone on why those actions should be taken. It addresses health literacy at the same time as it enables plans and providers to reach their own goals.

In part 2, we’ll tackle the next four ways to integrate content into your outreach: lessons, expert-led courses, self-assessments, and stories.

2022 National Summit Recap: Scaled for Many, Tailored to One, Leveraging Data to Impact Member Engagement

Posted on by Nicole Lopez

We’re happy to announce our participation in the 2022 BCBS National Summit was a success! In early May, mPulse Mobile sent our strongest health engagement experts to The Orange State to attend and speak at the Summit, and they returned with valuable insights, new connections, and a reaffirmed belief in the power of health engagement designed for consumers.

Chris Nicholson, mPulse CEO, Magdalen Kmiec, Vice President of Engagement Strategy, Christian Bagge, National Account Executive, and Reva Sheehan, Director of Customer Insights, met and talked with leaders from many different Blues plans gathering stories from the front lines of healthcare and swapping viewpoints on the newest trends in healthcare engagement.

For us, the conference was a chance to meet with our current BCBS customers and have in-person discussions about their engagement programs and overall experiences with our platform. We also took the opportunity, however, to branch out and meet other BCBS leaders with whom we’ve not yet worked and have an exchange of information about our respective places in the healthcare space. These conversations gave us better insight into the landscape they’re navigating and confidence that the direction we’re taking for our customers is indeed the best course.

From Members to Consumers: Healthcare in the Digital Age

One reoccurring theme from our conversations at the summit was the age-old struggle to drive healthy action and meet requirements set by CMS, but many of these discussions showed the health industry could be looking at it all wrong. Magdalen Kmiec discussed this during our joint presentation with Aimee Viles, Vice President of Digital Solutions for Cambia Health, Scaled for Many, Tailored to One: Leveraging Data to Impact Member Engagement.

Her main message was that members are no longer just members. Our members live in an Amazon and Netflix world where their needs are anticipated and delivered on before they can even ask. Their digital and real world lives are now seamless and fluid. And they don’t shed these experiences and customer service expectations when they interact with their health plans.

Download our white paper, From Member to Consumers, to learn more about this phenomenon and how plans can adapt »

Yet the healthcare industry has not created that same experience for their health consumers – but they can. That’s where Magdalen overviewed the four essential pillars of engagement: rich customer data, channel optimization, empowering content, and robust behavioral science.

Rich Customer Data

Plans have rich data on file, but are they using it? From the results of the member’s most recent A1c test to the date of their last wellness exam, data can be harnessed to create a better experience.

Equally important, though, is to gain data through conversations with your members. Language preferences, sentiment toward the plan or program, social determinants of health (SDoH) factors, and more are valuable data points that can be added to the file for each member. Then your future conversations will become much more tailored.

Channel Optimization

Customer expectations are evolving rapidly, and our health consumers expect consistent, accurate, and timely information at their fingertips regardless of the channel they see it. Omnichannel is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity to remain competitive.

The trick is to eliminate the silos between your channels and have them work together in a way that creates a single experience. So IVR, social media, SMS messaging, and streaming health content – it’s all working in sync to tell the same story.

Empowering Content

Low health literacy is a main driver of inaction. By delivering tailored, bite-sized streaming content in the moment based off insights gathered during conversational outreach, you are immediately addressing barriers and educating at the same time. Whether it by interactive stories, animations, or mini lessons to full courses, it gives the plan a chance to engage and empower in a more impactful way than can just be done by text message.

Robust Behavioral Science

There are two main questions for behavior change: Why would people want to do the behavior? Why aren’t they doing it already?

The ability to harness behavioral science , which tells us how people are likely to react and why, enables you to answer these questions and then leverage that information to drive behavior change. Put simply, people are irrational in predictable ways, so use that predicable irrationality to steer them in the direction of healthy behaviors. It’s the same methods used by companies like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and many other big major corporations – and it works.

Cambia Health: Gaps in Care and Rx Refill Program Outcomes

Cambia Health, our co-presenter at the summit and current client, is an ideal example of the members to consumers concept being effectively utilized, so Aimee joined Magdalen onstage to present two programs Cambia Health ran in partnership with mPulse Mobile.

The first was aimed at closing gaps in care for Cervical, Breast, and Colon Cancer screenings. Built on a foundation of behavioral science, the program outreached to 106,433 members across Commercial HCA, Commercial Non-HCA, Marketplace, and Medicare Advantage gather opt-in consent through SMS messaging (response required) before commencing.

Based on member reporting through this program, it was discovered the top 3 insights into why they weren’t completing the screening were:

  1. they already completing the screening
  2. they were too busy
  3. they thought the screenings were unnecessary

This is valuable information for a plan to have because it gives data with which to communicate further. For example, for those health consumers who think screenings are unnecessary, the plan could send streaming health content explaining the importance of the screening their missing (such as the breast cancer screening lesson you see below). And for those who already completed, the plan can use two-way SMS to collect more info on when or where that screening took place and amend their records.

The second program Aimee presented was an Rx Refill Engagement program with a 4-star goal for Part D medication adherence measures. This program included 48,980 MA members with active opt in and it was design as an interactive SMS program with conversational tailoring, follow up reminders, and barrier assessment. Refill rates with the solution were 85%, there was 72% positive feedback, and 20% of members requested additional reminders.

Looking Forward to More

We enjoyed the chance to join and network with all the Blues plans to discuss the future of healthcare engagement and how technology can play a huge role in it, and we can’t wait to return next year!

Shifting the Mindset: How Health Plans Can View Members as Consumers in a Digital-First World

Posted on by Nicole Lopez

What can health plans learn from the retail industry’s success with consumer engagement?  

A lot, it turns out. Leading retail organizations have been using important digital-first principles for a couple of decades now. This approach has not only transformed the expectations of everyday consumers for all organizations they encounter (including healthcare) but has also driven profits through the roof for these companies.  

Take a moment to think about it. When you sign into Amazon, everything you experience as an end user is seamless and customized. From the presentation of personalized recommendations on your homepage (which is different for every customer) to the fast and easy delivery of your items. It’s all frictionless and crafted for the consumer. 

Where does this leave healthcare? Well, even though health plans are not direct competitors of Amazon (or even in the same industry), their members live in an Amazon world and now have expectations set for this kind of consumer experience across all areas of their lives – food delivery, online retail, and yes, healthcare. The challenge for healthcare organizations now becomes leveling up to those expectations and harnessing these digital-first principles to improve their members’ experiences and inspire healthy behaviors. 

From Members to Consumers: How plans are adopting popular digital trends from leading consumer brands to drive better health outcomes » 

The first step toward that goal is understanding that members are no longer just members. They have become fully-fledged consumers of healthcare services and treating them as such is a critical way for plans to be competitive in a digital-first world. 

Beyond the Consumer Mindset: Implementing a Digital-First Experience 

Simply shifting your view of your members to consumers, however, is not enough. There are significant foundational and technological changes that must be implemented to truly realize this concept and transform the experience. 

  • Using Data to Customize the User Experience – Without data, customizing the experience in this way is impossible. Plans have more data at their disposal than you might think, though. From claims data and satisfaction surveys to engagement data from previous communications programs, it can all be leveraged to customize the experience. This results in tailored tools and resources at every point across their unique journey.  
  • Streaming Health Content – 5% of all Google searches are for health information. That is a lot of people turning to the internet for health education instead of their plan or provider. That also highlights the fact that health literacy is a prevalent issue and a contributing factor to inaction among members. Plans are in a unique position to increase health literacy by providing health education to their consumers with commercial quality streaming health content to sustain engagement, deliver the information that consumer needs at that point in time, and ultimately drive healthier actions at scale. 
  • An Omnichannel Approach – Combining an omnichannel approach with orchestration of resources and channels helps plans reach members in the way they prefer while allowing plan investments to perform with higher results and efficacy. Using a combination of 1 on 1 care coordination, interactive voice response (IVR), mobile web, resource triaging through AI short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS) and rich communication services (RCS) channels are a few examples of digital ways to engage and activate more consumers. 
  • Behavior Science and Conversational AI – Behavior science is a foundational tool for large tech companies to drive specific behaviors in their consumers and ignite growth. It’s healthcare’s time now to take from those lessons and apply them to the health of their members. Health programs and services that seek to understand the intricacies of human behavior and leverage these techniques will significantly increase engagement. 

Want the full version of this content? Access the complete white paper, From Members to Consumers » 

The Members to Consumers White Paper 

By implementing digital trends that drive engagement in the retail landscape, health plans can replicate this success for their population. Leading brands have had to continually stay aligned to trends and keep a high-touch strategy in place to drive sales. Health organizations are in a unique position to leverage consumer insights to refine their strategy, inspire consumers to take action, and lower costs, because unlike Apple or Amazon, health is a necessity. Ensuring your health consumers continually have a positive experience and adopt healthier behaviors based on their individual health needs is critical to drive health outcomes.  

This article gives just a peek into the ways health plans can serve that experience to their members. To get the full version of this content, including case studies from plans who have implemented digital-first techniques, download the white paper, From Members to Consumers: How plans are adopting popular digital trends from leading consumer brands to drive better health outcomes.

The Future of Health Literacy

Posted on by mPulse Team

In a world where health information is abundant yet often complex, understanding how to improve health literacy is crucial. Health literacy is more than just the ability to read medical pamphlets; it’s about understanding and utilizing health information to make informed decisions and follow treatment plans effectively. The importance of health literacy cannot be overstated, especially considering its impact on healthcare outcomes and costs in the US.

The Health Action Council aptly notes, “Health literacy is key to lowering healthcare costs, and better education is the key to health literacy.” This statement highlights the need to promote health literacy at every opportunity. From Googling symptoms before a doctor’s appointment to discussing healthcare decisions with trusted individuals, every interaction is a potential learning moment that healthcare providers can own and enhance.

Yet, despite recognizing the importance of health literacy in the US, many educational efforts remain dry and clinical, failing to engage modern health consumers effectively. With the rapid growth of the digital health engagement market, there is an urgent need for innovative strategies that captivate, educate, and activate health consumers through trending digital mediums.

Our article will explore three key digital health trends — captivating video content, engaging experts, and personalized community programs — and discuss how healthcare organizations can harness these trends to significantly improve health literacy. Join us in redefining health education and engagement in the digital era with mPulse Mobile’s cutting-edge approach.

What is health literacy?

Health literacy involves acquiring, understanding, and applying health information, enabling you to effectively make well-informed health decisions and adhere to treatment guidelines.

“Health literacy is key to lowering healthcare costs, and better education is the key to health literacy.” – Health Action Council.

You’re heading to the doctor. It’s time for that exam. You Google for quick answers before heading to your appointment. You see the doctor. They hand you a pamphlet and a few sheets of paper that you shove into a bag. When you get home, you text that person you trust. No, they didn’t go to medical school, but they always knew what to do.

Seizing learning moments to improve health literacy

By the year 2030, predictions indicate that the global corporate wellness market will surpass $100 billion, emphasizing the critical role of education in every health solution. Health leaders increasingly acknowledge that effective learning is essential at each step of behavioral change, particularly in addressing low health literacy. Despite significant investments, much of the current health education remains overly clinical and unengaging, aiming to inform rather than truly teach.

Traditional pamphlets, papers, and cluttered health portals filled with YouTube videos fall short of providing a real educational experience in this digital era. This presents a unique opportunity for healthcare to re-evaluate and revamp its approach to improving health literacy, moving away from outdated methods and towards more dynamic, engaging educational strategies.

The unhealthy state of digital health engagement

What do you do when health consumers don’t pay attention? If you’re most wellness programs, you hand out costly incentives in exchange for healthy actions (ex, $300 bucks to complete your annual physical). Meanwhile, telephone nursing and health coaching programs have high operational costs, highlighting the need for better self-directed options.

Because today’s health consumers want to get smart on their terms (and if we want them to learn to make smarter health decisions), we have to meet them where they are.

So how do we do that? How do we teach and guide them to the knowledge and progress they seek? To answer that, let’s look at some of the world’s most engaging digital products.

Embracing digital trends to improve health literacy in the US

Understanding the importance of health literacy is crucial in today’s healthcare landscape, especially in the US, where enhancing health literacy can lead to better health outcomes.

Here are three key digital trends that are transforming how to improve and promote health literacy:

1. Captivating with Video:

With video streaming services accounting for half of the global online time, it’s clear that well-produced videos in a structured, distraction-free environment are pivotal in holding viewers’ attention. This trend underscores the potential of video content to boost health literacy.

2. Educating with Engaging Experts:

The surge in online course enrollments – over five times that of total college enrollments in America – highlights a growing preference for learning from credible, entertaining sources. By leveraging podcasts, online videos, and courses led by appealing experts, healthcare providers can effectively educate and engage their audience.

Takeaway: From podcasts to online videos and courses, people show up to learn from experts with consumer appeal.

3. Activating with Community and Personalized Programs:

Programs like Peloton demonstrate the power of expert-led, community-supported experiences in inspiring real-life achievements. This trend reveals the value of communal learning and personalized programs in fostering health literacy.

By tapping into these digital trends, healthcare providers in the US can revolutionize their approach to health literacy, making it more engaging, accessible, and effective for their consumers.

How can you use these digital health trends to promote health literacy?

To effectively harness digital health trends and improve health literacy, the key lies in combining expertise in learning, content creation, and technology.

At mPulse Mobile, we’ve assembled an elite team of professionals in these domains to develop a comprehensive digital curriculum encompassing physical, financial, emotional, social, and career health. By developing strong partnerships with best-selling authors, TED speakers, and renowned physicians, we create custom and licensable health education content that rivals the engagement level of streaming television. 

Our advanced learning software supports a growing library of holistic health content, offering a quicker, more cost-effective route to enhance health literacy and engagement. This approach is designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing digital ecosystem, aligning with your brand and broader health programs and providing an innovative solution to improving health literacy.

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To learn more about mPulse’s digital health solutions and outcomes, Contact us at info@mpulse.com

Frictionless Healthcare: Fueling Behavior Change

Posted on by Eden Brownell

Have you ever wondered why Amazon provides its recommendations or why Netflix tailors your movie menu? It’s not because they must, dear readers. It’s because they know the power of behavioral science.

They both have behavioral science and psychology marketing teams working on the user experience and are uniquely aware of the constant barrage of advertisements and marketing that their consumers are being hit with throughout the day. People, including members we are trying to reach, see between 4k and 10k ads and make about 35,000 decisions every day. To complicate things further, 87% of information is subconsciously filtered. So, most of the time it can be next to impossible to get through to members.

So, you might be asking yourself what is behavioral science? And why does it matter for health communication?

Behavioral science describes the study of behavior through experimentation and observation. Behavioral scientists’ study when and why individuals engage in specific behaviors by examining the impact of factors such as conscious thoughts, motivation, social influences, contextual effects, and habits.

Behavioral science research is diverse and expansive. There is an abundance of work showing that human reasoning does not conform to what common sense predicts. Behavioral scientists study why people sometimes behave in a way that may not maximize their own well-being, such as making choices in the present that do not maximize their happiness in the future; examining how seemingly arbitrary contextual factors influence our decisions, beliefs, and attitudes or test how different incentives affect people’s motivation and behavior.

Learn more about using behavioral science in health communications by viewing our on-demand webinar, Frictionless Healthcare: Fueling Behavior Change »

So, readers, you might be asking yourself how do you apply these ideas in healthcare or health behavior change? If we really want to drive behavior change, we need to understand how people behave. When it comes down to it, there’s a lot of human behavior that we can explain in terms of two simple forces: Friction and Fuel. A rocket ship is a helpful metaphor that Dan Ariely uses to describe behavior change. To get a rocket ship moving, you need to increase fuel and decrease friction. To change behavior, you need to increase fuel (increasing motivation) and decrease friction (removing barriers). And it turns out, these concepts play out quite well in healthcare, so let’s examine that.

The Friction

In healthcare, frictions are anything that get in the way of your member performing a positive health behavior. Friction is typically caused by uncertainty on the part of your member. They could be uncertain about how hard an action will be, how long it will take, or how much it will cost.

Technology can go a long way to uncover and decrease friction.

One way is to employ barrier messages to uncover challenges (the friction) a member may be facing. Barrier messages are specific questions posed based on research of top barriers for specific audiences with specific health actions. Barriers happen. Why not proactively create opportunities to uncover and address them?

Once the barrier is discovered, we can work to solve it then drive motivation using proven behavior science techniques. You can see examples of those barrier messages below and observe how in a short phone screen you can do a lot to try to reduce barriers and increase motivation.

 

The Fuel

Speaking of motivation, fuel is anything that makes a positive health behavior more appealing. This could be member testimonials that utilize people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation) or an offering using incentives to activate the concept of reciprocity. Or you could utilize the endowment effect in messaging (an emotional bias that causes individuals to value an owned object higher, often irrationally, than its market value) like The Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG) did to boost flu vaccine rates by up to 11%. The most powerful of these vaccination texts simply used ‘reserved for you’ messaging.

One of the ways we use these concepts is in stories or fotonovelas. This format is something members are used to seeing on social media, are they are quick and viewable on-the-go.

The Big Picture

Behavioral science can be tricky, but you can use the concept of friction and fuel to make a big difference in behavior change. This post was just an introduction to friction and fuel in healthcare, but we’ll be following up with a lot more information around the specific concepts and examples of each, so stay tuned for part 2!

Activating Healthcare Consumer Behavior Change: Make it Personal

Posted on by Gabe Kratzer

Key takeaways from our interview with Solome Tibebu

In the last decade, behavioral health has grown from an ancillary service offering to a critical component of health services and care delivery. According to an OPEN MINDS Market Intelligence Report, spending on mental health services totaled $225 billion in 2019, up 52% from 2009. Companies like Talkspace and BetterHelp, founded in 2012 and 2013, recognized this spike and made it their mission to increase the availability and accessibility of mental health services to those struggling to access and navigate care. Behavioral health has continued to evolve, and it is incumbent on all healthcare organizations to adopt new methods of providing care to vulnerable populations. Learning from innovative companies and forward-thinking leaders is vital to building an effective care strategy for the one in five U.S. adults living with a mental illness.  

mPulse sat down with Solome Tibebu, a pioneer in behavioral health technology and innovation, whose passion stems from the care gaps that have existed and still remain in mental healthcare. At the early age of 16 years old, Tibebu started a non-profit online resource, Anxiety in Teens, to offer education and support for teens and young adults who were struggling with anxiety and depression. After ten years, she began working in startups and consulting, continuing to advocate for the role of technology in advancing behavioral healthcare. 

This year in June, Tibebu will be putting on her third annual Going Digital: Behavioral Health Tech summit, a conference where health plans, providers, health systems, employers, investors and startups convene to discuss the evolving landscape of behavioral health. The virtual (for now) event is a great opportunity to share best practices for implementing digital resources and innovative technologies to improve access to mental health services. We are proud to be a sponsor for the second consecutive year, and we look forward to contributing to discussions around how healthcare organizations can implement solutions to tackle barriers and make mental healthcare more accessible for all.

Improving Access through Technology Innovation

COVID-19 created an array of challenges to advancing mental health access, but it also sparked a digital transformation that brought innovation to the center stage. With more consumers staying home, “tech has exploded as a response to the pandemic,” Tibebu prefaces. Technology plays an important role in understanding and addressing the social dynamics that affect each person living with mental illness. Some of the challenges that plague mental health accessibility require more than simple one-way consumer interactions, however. 

Talking about health plans, Tibebu emphasizes, “stigma is a huge barrier even after they’ve procured some kind of solution, so they need to have a strategy around how they’re gonna address stigma, and engagement of the member.” Stigma can produce feelings of worthlessness and lead to social isolation while social determinants of health (SDOH) like transportation access or income level can prevent consumers from seeking care. To tackle barriers like SDOH and stigma, it is necessary to utilize technology to understand consumer needs and preferences. 

Conversational AI and Natural Language Understanding power the capability to deploy behavioral science strategies at scale when communicating with vulnerable populations. For instance, incorporating a strategy like Affect ensures that messaging is based in empathy, increasing motivation to engage with sensitive healthcare outreach. Social Proof is an effective strategy that helps assure consumers that they are not alone and can help reduce social isolation caused by mental health stigma.  

Applying behavioral science and identifying SDOH in conversational outreach enables a deeper understanding of consumers. Once individual preferences are captured, healthcare organizations can efficiently tailor relevant content to each consumer and activate meaningful behavior change. 

Delivering Tailored Content at Scale

Incorporating clinically validated behavior change techniques helps with understanding the needs and preferences of consumers. Tibebu asks, “now all of these payers have implemented their telehealth solution but it’s the next level – how do we get something more customized, personalized to their respective populations?”  

Plans and providers can drive deeper engagement and self-efficacy by adopting tailored engagement strategies that lift utilization of the programs they’ve invested in. Conversational AI enables the orchestration of programs and resource delivery across preferred consumer channels. Natural Language Understanding helps capture important data from consumer responses to help route them to the appropriate digital resource. 

A one-size-fits-all care model fails to meet the needs of each consumer, while customization empowers healthcare organizations to intervene with meaningful content that drives behavior change. “How can you identify the consumer’s need and triage them to the right end solution?” Tibebu reiterates. Certain individuals who prefer a visual learning experience may benefit from a course like Living with Anxiety & Depression, while those who respond better to audio can be directed to a podcast like Mental Health Matters. 

Providing on-demand, curated content can motivate consumers to take control of their health and execute healthier behaviors, leading to improved outcomes and a better consumer experience.

Impacting Beyond Mental Health

We asked Tibebu why personalization in mental healthcare should be important to payers specifically. She responded, “because mental health is at the vortex of all health…for all of these other conditions, expensive conditions, that are impacted as a result of poor mental health.” Consumers who are negatively affected by mental health are more likely to develop chronic conditions, which piles up costs for both the consumer and the organization providing services. This creates an opportunity for plans and providers to adopt innovative solutions that promote well-being through tailored engagement. 

MagellanRx Management serves a complex population and recognized the need to incorporate well-being content for their members who were experiencing loneliness and anxiety from COVID-19. They partnered with mPulse to deploy digital fotonovelas, which use culturally sensitive stories in a comic-strip format to improve health education and activate diverse populations. The program drove impressive outcomes, yielding over a 38% engagement rate and a 90% member satisfaction score. 

We questioned how organizations outside of payers and providers can “step up” to make mental healthcare more accessible. Walmart Wellness is a nationally recognized brand whose goal is to “help customers raise their hand and more easily access their hubs,” Tibebu clarifies. Walmart partnered with mPulse to implement SMS solutions along with streaming health education to drive their customers to the right well-being resources. The program included custom learning plans across several wellness topics and produced significant improvements in customer engagement. 

After chatting with Tibebu, we are reassured that mental healthcare should be the focal point of an effective engagement strategy. Innovative companies can promote mental well-being and health literacy by leveraging technology that personalizes outreach. Educating consumers with tailored content through timely and convenient engagement builds self-efficacy and lasting behavior change.

Learn more about Conversational AI and streaming health education here. 

 

CareSource Activates Hard-to-Reach Members with Conversational Outreach and Streaming Content

Posted on by Gabe Kratzer

COVID-19 Accelerating Digital Engagement

It is no secret that COVID-19 has changed the way healthcare communication is delivered to consumers. The uncertain nature of the pandemic has forced healthcare organizations to incorporate digital strategies to continuously update their members on important COVID-19 information. Just this year, health plans have had to respond to the new mandate requiring reimbursements for at-home COVID-19 tests.  

Gaps remain in other facets of COVID-19 communication, like driving behavior change to increase vaccinations. Across the country, states are seeing lower vaccination rates among Medicaid beneficiaries. In California, the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) released a January 2022 report indicating that 81% of the general population had received one dose of a COVID vaccine compared to only 54% of Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) beneficiaries. Significant disparities in vaccination completion such has this have developed in states beyond California as well. 

CareSource, an Ohio-based managed care plan offering insurance coverage to vulnerable populations across five states, recognized a similar disparity in their diverse member population and sought a solution. Traditional methods of engaging members had failed to produce desired results, creating an opportunity to incorporate a new approach in their outreach efforts. The plan partnered with us to implement conversational outreach and streaming health education into their COVID-19 vaccine program strategy.  

Here’s some key takeaways from the program along with strategies that health plans can adopt to drive vaccine engagement.  

Strategies That Personalize Outreach

Delivering vital information about vaccines becomes more difficult when using a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with vulnerable members. A successful COVID-19 outreach program requires personalized interactions with members to inspire healthier actions. CareSource identified a need to activate hard-to-reach consumers and sought a tool to tailor engagement based of range of factors including health beliefs. 

The plan leveraged our robust technology platform and Natural Language Understanding capabilities, which enabled tailored engagement through 25 SMS workflows, 1 Secure Survey, and 1 streaming video.  

We helped deploy SMS surveys to assess individual vaccine readiness levels, and members were assigned one of three personas based on their responses: Ready, Unsure, and Nonbeliever. Developing personas enables plans to tailor messaging according to personalized interactions with members to inspire healthier actions each member’s preferences and self-reported barriers. Messaging must be intentional and sensitive to inspire paradigm shifts for unvaccinated members or members who have no plans to get vaccinated.

Behavior science informs every communication we send, and this program was no different. An effective behavioral science strategy in the CareSource program was giving members Social Proof, which comes from the Social Determination Theory and suggests that people are motivated by feelings of competence and relatedness. Through the texting channel, members were sent a streaming video, “My Why,” which highlights a diverse range of people explaining their personal reasons for getting vaccinated. Plans can inspire confidence and healthier actions just by making members feel as though they are not alone.

Another behavior science strategy employed in the program was Authority, which is using trusted health experts to improve education, drive health literacy and reduce barriers like misinformation. Using sources like the CDC can ease doubt and motivate members to reconsider personal health beliefs that may contribute to vaccine hesitancy.   

CareSource provided zip code data, which we used to further tailor conversations based on socioeconomic factors. Providing members with personalized, familiar interactions gives the member a voice and drives self-efficacy. 

By incorporating behavioral science and SDOH into their COVID-19 engagement strategy, CareSource was able to tailor conversations and streaming educational content at scale. Social determinants of health (SDOH) can play an integral role in tailoring messaging to each individual inspiring vaccine readiness. 

Innovation That Drives Outcomes

We sent a total of 4 million SMS messages and delivered over 3 million automated dialogues to 664,000 members. The program yielded nearly a 15% engagement rate, an increase from traditional rates of 8-10%. Of the members who received a first dose, 81% reported they would follow through to get a second dose. By the end of the program, 57,000 of the 107,000 “Unsure” members moved into the “Ready” persona. 

Each member response led to additional tailoring, with automated responses covering topics like variants, availability, cost, fear/anxiety, effectiveness, and side effects. Upon conducting 30-day and 90-day reviews of the program, common themes were uncovered within each member persona. Gathering insights from member interactions can help influence future vaccine engagement programs and ensure that each conversation is tailored to drive the best results. 

As companies focus on highly tailored engagement, scalable intelligent capabilities are required.  CareSource has demonstrated the potential for Conversational AI outreach and streaming health education to drive healthier actions and meaningful outcomes.

Member Communication for the Home COVID-19 Test Coverage Mandate and Other Rapid Response Programs

Posted on by Nora Cristobal

Beginning January 15th, the Biden Administration required health insurers to cover the costs of up to 8 at-home COVID-19 tests per month for their privately insured members. This not only helps reduce or eliminate up-front costs of Americans seeking an at-home solution to COVID-19 testing, but it also helps dull the pain points of finding testing facilities when needed.

The mandate, which quickly became breaking news, was a welcome announcement for health care consumers, but it threatened to strain insurers who were given official notice just days prior to its effective date. In the last two weeks, we’ve heard from many of our healthcare partners about the challenges this presents during an already busy season. Plans found themselves in a difficult position needing to communicate as quickly and accurately as possible while maintaining their current programs and managing their open enrollment period (OEP).

Easy Rapid Roll-out Practices for Your Members and Organization

Between call-center re-routes, at-home test kit availabilities, and managing the member experience, staying agile after this announcement can become both overwhelming and costly. This is not the time to trial and error communication with your populations.

Relying on the methods you have already been using for member communication is your best bet in yet another unpredictable turn during the pandemic, and there are several distinct best practices plans can follow to handle unexpected situations like this as they arise.

To start, use the quickest and most impactful means of communication with your members first. 3.8 billion people own a smart phone and SMS is a reliable source of fast communication. If that line of communication is already set up with your population, connecting them with resources after any sudden event will be much simpler. The minimum data requirements we recommend for our at-home testing mandate outreach or similar programs are the member’s first and last name, date of birth, mobile phone number, and address.

Channels like SMS are ideal for reaching consumers quickly but implementing a multi-channel approach by including email and even IVR channels is an option, too. For example, using a consumer’s preferred method of outreach, like IVR, to authenticate mobile numbers and direct them to two-way automated workflows can be an effective tool, allowing your organization to provide cost saving information within hours while still utilizing all lines of preferred communication.

Whatever the channels you choose, we recommend providing comprehensive education and resources by redirecting consumers to trusted information sources, such as an interactive FAQs page or links to valuable sites like USPS How to find a test site. This reduces the chance of them calling their plan for information that is thorough and easily accessible elsewhere. In the case of this at-home test mandate, providing them information on their pharmacy or a link to all in-network pharmacies near them can also help the plan save money on reimbursement costs.

Orchestrating this outreach early and getting in front of the member with the correct messaging before they reach out to your call centers can help mitigate costs in any situation, but it can be especially helpful after the at-home mandate announcement. It will not only help ease the influx of calls to a costly call center, but it will also lead your membership to the resources they need to secure their at-home tests at a more reasonable cost to the plan.

Another rapid roll-out best practice we recommend is partnering with a solution provider which has the technology in place to quickly deploy two-way messaging at scale. The ability to have bi-directional conversations to address the specific questions of each member individually (ideally through natural language understanding technology) will significantly improve the efficacy of your program. And with this partnership in place, you won’t need to focus on setting up member communications in the middle of figuring out execution. You can lean on your solution provider to build and deploy the program for you.

Interested in learning more? Watch our on-demand webinar on at-home covid-19 mandate best practices and rapid response solutions »

The most important factor, however, is acting quickly. If your outreach provider has contingencies in place for last-minute events like this, they will most likely be able to stand up a solution that has all our best practice elements included in a timeframe of two to three weeks or less.

How Does This Fit Into the Member Journey?

Though communication surrounding this mandate is trickier than other rapid responses, swift messaging to member populations is still essential. When a health plan reacts quickly to market changes and provides helpful information to ease members and patients through a complicated and cumbersome process, they become trusted partners throughout that member’s journey. The right communications from a trusted authority, reduce the complexity this new mandate has presented, and others to come, and will prevent misinformation that members face. If your organization has a communications partner with experience standing up programs quickly, then it can feel easier on the member to get common questions answered, find vaccine sites, and submit claims, etc. – further reducing barriers to crucial and accurate information.

And with CAHPS right around the corner, what better timing to solidify that spot as your member’s trusted source of information that is preventative and timely? Further strengthening trusted relationship between plan and member.

Understanding your membership and leaning on the information you have, such as their preferred language, the channels your healthcare consumers use, and the right contact information will go far when your organization needs to pivot and deploy information timely and most efficiently.

COVID-19 Home Test Coverage Takeaways

If your organization is currently using SMS to outreach to your populations, you are in the perfect position to outreach quickly and at scale, and you only have to switch out standard messaging with the right messaging for the moment. An easy framework for rapid rollout solutions your organization has at the ready, is a sure-fire way to communicate all new breaking information.

Then working with your solution provider to craft the perfect messaging or leaning on your solution provider’s behavior science technology will impact how swiftly your organization can easily respond in moments when messaging is not able to take the priority–like we saw just a few weeks ago many other times throughout the pandemic. The focus can remain on execution while your automated solution provides your membership with what they need to feel like they can come to you for the most reliable trusted resources at any time.