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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Amy Jordan, Vice President of Consumer Digital Engagement at UnitedHealthcare
00:12:03
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- [00:00]
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- [00:39]
Jacob Emerson
Hello everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Payer Issues podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by Amy Jordan, who's the Vice President of Consumer experience within United Healthcare's commercial business. Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me on the podcast today.
- [00:56]
Amy Jordan
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
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Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. And before we dive into everything, we want to talk with you about, Amy, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what it is that you do today at UnitedHealthcare?
- [01:08]
Amy Jordan
Perfect. Yeah, happy to. So yes, I am in charge of all things digital and consumer experience for UnitedHealthcare. I've been with the organization for about six years and so I'm really focused on our digital experiences with UnitedHealthcare app and our web experience. MyUHD.com and then I also lead our rewards and incentive programs for the commercial business and really focused on supporting our teams out in the field to make sure that they are talking about the great tools that we feel like we're building here at UnitedHealthcare to support our members.
- [01:41]
Jacob Emerson
Fantastic. Well, let's talk about one of those tools, Amy. As you know, UnitedHealthcare recently launched a data driven enhancement to its provider search quality that aims to help people more easily connect with care based on their personal needs, their their health plan benefits and their own preferences. So talk to us a little bit about this. What is Smart Choice and who is it available to?
- [02:05]
Amy Jordan
Yeah, absolutely. It's, we're very excited about it. It launched about six to eight weeks ago now and we did a slow rollout and it's broadly available now to a large portion of our commercial business. We have a few separate health plans that are on different and distinct tools, but the majority of our commercial business now has access to this tool. I think it really starts with Our strategy around really trying to simplify the healthcare system for our members, particularly around guidance and navigation. We're all aware of how complex the healthcare system can be and we have a really broad network, which is great. It provides a lot of choice for our members, but sometimes can be hard to figure out who should I see and when should I see which resource and for what problem. And so our goal is to really create simple tools and Smart Choice is kind of the first example of that that we've launched recently to really kind of help drill down into some of that data and really bring it forward in an easy to understand way. So it's a proprietary scoring methodology that we created here that's across those five capabilities of quality, benefits, personal fit, convenience factors, and then ultimately that provider data quality component, which we know is a, is a challenge to make sure that we're keeping that information up to date as members are coming in and searching the tools. So we're trying to be as transparent as possible about when we last validated that provider information. So that's kind of the core, core of what it is. And we score those providers across that algorithm 0 to 100 and then match that up to what the member is searching for to try to provide the best fit for that member to help them make that smart choice.
- [03:45]
Jacob Emerson
Sure. Understood. So this is all about simplifying access to high quality care. I wonder if you could expand a bit for us, Amy, in terms of specific member pain points or unmet needs that really prompted the development of Smart Choice and how the platform's personalization engine improves the care navigation experience compared to previous search tools.
- [04:07]
Amy Jordan
So I think it's great. You know, for us it was really focused on how, how we can bring forward this information in an easy to ingest way. And some people want a lot of information and some people don't necessarily need all of the nuts and bolts. And you know, that changes from person to person. Maybe if I'm just going to search for a primary care physician, maybe a little less invested, but if I'm going out and I'm getting a knee procedure done or something that's a little bit more extensive, I, I'm going to do more research. And so we're trying to balance how much information we're providing to not overwhelm our members because not all of them are, you know, as invested in this as maybe we all are. And those of you listening on the podcast to truly understand some of the nuts and bolts. And so it's really around creating that easy to understand Score and then allowing for those double clicks in to really understand for those members that maybe want a little bit more information so when they go into the experience they can see the score. You can take that at face value and make your decision or you can click in and you can really read up on some of these providers. We have all of the, the biography information, cost information, you know, location, quality metric information that's in there. But then you can really understand how they rate at that quality component to make up the score, how they rate across your benefits. Am I maximizing all of the benefits available to me as a member? And then those convenience factors, do they have nights and weekends available? Do they offer online scheduling, do they offer virtual visits? All of that is built into this as well. And then finally that personal fit profile, which is really a key part of that personalization strategy you mentioned, it's really bringing forward the members own preferences combined with what we all know in this industry from a quality data metrics perspective and really marrying the two together. So you're taking the best of both worlds if you will. So you're not losing the steerage to quality. But when things are equal from a quality and benefit maximization perspective, it's really around how then we look at what matters most to you as the member gender of a provider, language of that provider spoken and board certifications or not. Those are the types of factors we can layer in with that personal fit profile.
- [06:11]
Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. No, this, this sounds very, very beneficial from the members perspective. And, and as I understand it, UnitedHealthcare actually made over 400 digital enhancements last year alone. So, so how does Smart Choice fit into that broader digital transformation strategy? And I wonder Amy, what lessons would you share with the other insurers or employers listening in who could take, take lessons consumer facing tech?
- [06:39]
Amy Jordan
Yeah, for sure. We have done a lot of work to really improve our digital experiences, you know, and we're really proud of the fact that we are the number one payer app out there right now in the Apple and Google store. And we've received a lot of positive feedback from our consultant partners in the industry and our employer partners really around the investments we've made and how far we've taken some of the digital capabilities we've brought forward for us that Smart Choice is one of the first kind of cornerstones of our retail focus strategy. And what I mean by that is how do we really simplify the healthcare experience to really allow for that, that true kind of shopping component that you get with most other things within your daily Life, except healthcare. Oftentimes healthcare is decisions are made for us, whether that's in the provider's office or due to, you know, an emergency and having to, to find the closest care. And it's not necessarily something that you shop for historically. And with this tool, among a few others that we have planned as part of a broader strategy around making this more retail focused and retail friendly, we' really trying to empower our consumers to really allow them to shop, to compare, to make the best decision that fits their needs in that moment and then bring that forward and hopefully help improve their health overall. With these tools there to really guide them appropriately and to help them maximize their dollars, which we know are increasingly becoming less and less. And so really trying to just provide our members with as much information as possible to make healthcare while challenging a simpler experience.
- [08:09]
Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. Well, Amy, if we're talking about the bigger context here as well, we know that 67% of employers today are collecting and analyzing employee health data in depth. So how do you think the tools like Smart Choice will evolve as part of a broader shift towards more data driven health plan design and value based care?
- [08:31]
Amy Jordan
Yeah, I certainly think the data is a key part in bringing forward that personalized approach to healthcare. And certainly we've seen that evolution over the past few years particularly. We certainly have been focused on it in the six years that I've been here and increasingly investing more and more there. But the more data that we have on an individual member or the more data we are given for ourselves to make informed decisions, we're really able to unlock key differences that are going to matter most to me based off of my health care needs and maybe those shift from year to year to really bring forward plan designs that are going to be able to address those better. And so the more that we can ingest data, medical data, and bring that forward in a way that's, that's helpful to the members as they're making the decisions. Whether that's upfront when they're deciding on their benefit plan design, or throughout the year as they're figuring out how to best utilize those plans. We're really going to be able to lock for them a lot of key opportunities to not only improve their health, save themselves some money, but ultimately plan better for the future as they're thinking about those next steps or phases of their life, whether they know they're planning, you know, to try and, you know, build a family in the years to come or whatnot by giving them that information and kind of ingesting that and then returning that to them in a way that's really easy to understand and to make decisions off of. We're hoping that we're really going to be able to build out something that provides for that more consumer choice and the evolution of healthcare as we look ahead.
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Jacob Emerson
Wonderful. Well, Amy, what else are we missing? Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners today?
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Amy Jordan
I think for us, you know, the biggest thing, as I said, is really right, how can we put the consumer at everything that we do? And that's been a shift for us over the past couple of years. We certainly have always been consumer focused, but our leadership has really challenged us to think about that consumer experience. And we've increasingly see that come up as we're talking to our employers and clients around how we're better engaging consumers. And so as we think about all of the tools that we're building out, they're great. We hope that they are going to be effective in helping people make better healthcare decisions. But if they aren't aware of them, we can build as many tools as we want and it's not going to do anything. So for us, in parallel with building out these tools, we're really focused on how we can drive engagement and utilizing them. And so there's a lot of strategies that we're building out and trying to employ as part of this or alongside, you know, the digital work that we're doing to really make people aware of some of the great capabilities. But then also, also with that data that we have, bring that back to them in a way that will say, hey, are you aware of this opportunity to save money by switching from a 30 to 90 day supply for a drug? Or we see that you have had some recent ER visits. Are you aware that you can use virtual care instead for some of these? So mostly it's a lack of awareness sometimes and bringing that forward to members in a way that really feels relevant and contextual to how they're engaging with us is another key part of what we're thinking about as we're building out these tools and abilities, but engaging them in them as well.
- [11:41]
Jacob Emerson
Fantastic. Well, Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me here on the podcast and for sharing your insights with our listeners. We really appreciate it.
- [11:50]
Amy Jordan
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This is great.
- [11:53]
Jacob Emerson
And to our listeners, if you'd like to listen to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare, you can Visit Becker Hospital Review.com.