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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Simplifying the Digital Health Landscape for Employers with Brian Cheney
00:10:14
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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone, this is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Payer Issues podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by Brian Chaney, who serves as division Senior Vice President of Sales, operations and commercial markets growth at Healthcare Service Corporation. Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me on the podcast today.
- [00:17]
B
Happy to be here. Thanks, Jacob.
- [00:19]
A
Absolutely. And before we dive into everything we want to talk with you about today, Brian, can you first tell us a little bit more about yourself and what it is that you do today at HCSC?
- [00:28]
B
Happy to. I've been here at HCSC for 20 years, which seems either like a short day or lifetime, depending on the day. Always worked in different parts of our commercial or employer space. So I've known small group employers large, worked with our national customers for five or six years and for the last about year I've been in charge of trying to find solutions for all of them in the healthcare space. Sometimes we call that a product, we call it an offering, we call it things like I think we're going to dive into today. And the summary of those things is like, what are we doing to solve their healthcare problems and keep their employees, you know, as best we possibly can. So that's, that's what I get up and think about every day, if that helps.
- [01:09]
A
That is super helpful and appreciate you giving the audience some background there, Brian. So we're here today to talk a little bit about HCSC launching a new digital health platform called the Unity Health Hub. And it's aimed at helping employers more easily navigate the currently fragmented digital health landscape. So for, for health plans listening in or other employer benefits leaders out there who might not be super familiar with what this is, talk to us about what the problem was that existed before the Hub and it ultimately made this necessary, and how the platform actually works day to day for an employee on the ground or the employer that needs it.
- [01:49]
B
Yeah, happy to. I think this concept and this thing we're launching, like most good things, are born out of necessity, right? They're born out of truly solving a problem. And what we continue to hear from employers across the country is frankly, exhaustion, out of time themselves in terms of navigating this landscape that we're going to go into some rough numbers of the thousands of digital point solutions that are out there would kind of lead you to this point of just fatigue over which is the best how am I solving employee problems? So that was the thesis, right? Is can we do that better? And certainly, you know, HCSC and all carriers work with some of these digital assets today. The trick is, how do you create an ecosystem? And that's what we believe we're launching, that allows for optionality inside of what the employer and member can see, letting that digital solution find them at the right place, the right time, and then one of the most important things is how do they know if it actually worked? So in a nutshell, the Unity Health hub will allow them to manage these different categories and that's how they tend to think about it. Like, who's solving my, my diabetes issue, my women's health, my weight management. Like, like things that are common categories. Who's going to create a network, if you will, Jacob, of those solutions? That's the first step, just building the technical integration. Then who's going to make it consumable by the member? Who's going to create a way. And we can talk a bit more about this, where the member knows where to find that solution based on maybe their particular acuity in the weight management category, are they severely overweight or do they just have some maintenance they'd like to do? Our solution will give them that guidance. It would then give them a hub of reporting and data where they can see all the analytics in one place. And then the most important part, don't lose any of that healthcare journey out there in the point solution itself. And what I mean there in the fourth point is can you then connect the data and connect that part of their care journey back to everything they're doing? And so that's why we took some time to settle in on, on a partner and our approach that we think does all four of those things.
- [04:01]
A
Understood. So you're really trying to tackle that vendor fatigue that everyone in the industry is familiar with and then ultimately making it easier for, for the members to navigate this, this complicated space. And you know, we, we've seen a lot of other insurers across the country launch vendor hubs in the last few years as well. We've, we've also heard from health plans, from employers ultimately burned by point solutions that don't deliver on the outcomes that they promise. And so what's the, what's the vetting criteria for the solutions that are going to be offered across the hub? And how does, how does HSC plan to handle a vendor that might underperform against some of the stated benchmarks that they put out?
- [04:42]
B
Yeah, great question. I think there's two, two liens here that are important to the employer. And one is that we have some sort of vetting process to your point, and really what they want that to do what they want us to empower is transparency into the data, which I said. But the actual touch, the moment where you influenced the member and proving that each, I'll use a word I think is familiar to folks in industry. Each milestone, each point that you said you would move the member to access this reading or this test or this thing is accurately reported on so that they know that it worked. And the thing that you and I would hear in industry a lot is in that vetting, are you making sure that nobody's counting the same dollar twice? Right. And so that the real true way to do that is to be able to see how they move through apps, how they move through the selection process and frankly in time these point solutions themselves will probably come in and out of those care categories as they have to prove it in a way that is the digital touch point, not some of the older school things like how many mailers did you send to their home or did send them a text message. Those things are valid, but it's really like did you actually move the needle through the site of care, the application of care? That's kind of lane one. Lane two is some of these especially larger employers say like I've already vetted, I've done some identification of one that I think hits my population need. And what I want you to really do, which we can through Unity Health Hub is simply enable it very quickly for me so that I can test and I can validate. So we'll do both, Jacob. We'll have a more curated set of things where we provide proof points and data and then we will allow the larger, more custom employers to say I've already picked four or five, can you do it quickly for me so I can get it to market and find out if it works?
- [06:31]
A
Understood. So, so a deep vetting process but then getting this up quickly for these employers. So yeah, that makes sense. And you know, we've also heard you mentioned this earlier, Brian, but we've heard from health plans over the years as well of building, acquiring digital health infrastructure. It's, it's complicated and it takes time and some companies have seen m mixed results. So ultimately, what does the Unity Health Hub do for the self insured employer, for the large corporation that has a good benefits consultant? What does the Unity Health Hub do differently than what that employer maybe could have pieced together on their own in the past?
- [07:09]
B
Yeah, I think speed is the biggest thing that we held true there. And what I mean by speed and scalability is when you do those direct integrations with Carriers, whether that's HCSC or anybody, it's IT work. Right. And it's big and it can be cumbersome and feel costly and long timelines. By going with a solution like Unity Health Hub, you pick a specialist type thing and have IT get really good at doing that quickly and efficiently. Sharing data standards where you don't have to do everything as a total custom one off because you've built a process that is just hyper efficient in just that piece of the ecosystem. And that is a solve that. Especially as you said upmarket we hear all the time I, I want to try it on my own, I want to do this. But that shouldn't take, you know, an 8 to 10 month 3 party IT project to get off the ground, should it? That's a question they ask. So we, we think this solves a big part of that problem.
- [08:08]
A
Absolutely. So trying to remove that, that big IT barrier that a lot of employers often face, the, the investment time and money, which is funny by selling it
- [08:17]
B
with another IT company. Right, but one that focuses there.
- [08:21]
A
Sure, that makes sense.
- [08:22]
B
Yeah.
- [08:22]
A
Well, Brian, what else are we missing here? Anything we haven't touched on about the Unity Health Hub or anything else you want to mention while you've got the ears of a lot of other health plan colleagues from around the country?
- [08:35]
B
Yeah, I think the part we maybe didn't hit as much yet is like what is that going to feel like to the member, to the employee? And so if you picture, you know, their willingness to step into a carrier's digital app in the first place, once they're there, the Unity Health Hub becomes a layer that lets them either questionnaire based or based on something we might know about them. The member sees, oh, I could go click into each of these point solutions now in one unified journey, when that Jacob becomes a separate app or a separate connection, we find that we lose the member. They don't make that leap to go pull up a different thing and continue their digital journey. There's. So as we roll this out that's been a big part of the focus is how do you keep the member engaged, seeing this as just a simple extension of the benefits their employer offers and then wanting to continue to click through things. So that's the one piece I would really want people to understand the vision of.
- [09:34]
A
Yeah, no, and definitely appreciate, appreciate you adding that on there. Very important for our audience to know ultimately how the member is impacted by this on the ground. At the end of the day, Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us about this and forward to hearing how this all goes for you as this continues to roll out. Really appreciate it.
- [09:54]
B
Happy to do it. Maybe we get back together when. When it's got some miles on it and talk about some successes. That would be great.
- [10:00]
A
Absolutely. Doors open anytime. Thanks for chatting with us.
- [10:04]
B
Thank you.
- [10:05]
A
And to our listeners. If you'd like to listen to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare, you can visit Beckershospitalreview.com.