Last week, HCEG’s marquis sponsor, Softheon, hosted a webinar “Digital Commerce Distribution: Driving Value in the Age of the ‘Digital Payer’.” The hour long webinar, available here as an MP4, was presented by Michael Hendershot, Business Development Director at Softheon and Dana Franke, Director of Operations at Softheon.
As the title implies, the webinar presented information on digital health and how health plans can utilize digital commerce programs to remain competitive in today’s healthcare market. The presenters also offered various ideas and approaches for developing a digital commerce strategy. There was a Q & A session at the end where participants raised some good questions.
The Digital Commerce Distribution Agenda
The agenda for the webinar included the following topics (each starting at the time noted)
- How does digital commerce differ from traditional channels? (12:07)
- What are the main components of digital commerce distribution? (14:04)
- How has digital commerce revolutionized traditional payer approaches? (15:28)
- What role does digital commerce play in customer experience strategies? (16:45)
- What steps should payers take to design their digital commerce strategy? (19:38)
- In what ways can digital commerce provide insight into member behavior and trends? (21:21)
- Can digital commerce be optimized to help generate a greater portion of total revenue? (23:25)
- How can payers incorporate a greater portion of their business into digital commerce? (25:14)
Additional Insight from the Webinar
The webinar provided a lot of statistics, information and actionable ideas for webinar attendees. The reader is urged to view the webinar where they will be presented with informative slides, information, ideas and comments like the following:
- “Health plans need not only provide the tools prospects and members need to interact with the health plan but also launch marketing strategies through the digital tools they make available”
- “Digital tools have revolutionized sales and enrollment, administrative functions like provider searches, premium payment, claims status and other common customer service activities.”
- “Payers need to be able to provide a balance of customer experience strategies depending on their target market. Medicare members may be more focused on one on one communication and education in an advocate role via traditional channels while digital tools may be the point of first contact for younger families and recent college graduates.”
What must payers understand about digital commerce?
- “Health plans must understand their member population and how these members prefer to communicate with the health plan. Then the plans must use that information to design an online experience focusing on minimizing the amount of time that customer service interactions take.”
- “Digital commerce is not just an IT challenge but a company-wide initiative.”
- “If your core claims administration system can accept 834 transactions, then you are well-positioned to work with technology providers like Softheon”
- “When you’ve seen one 834 (enrollment transaction), you’ve seen one 834”
Some Questions from the Audience
The following were some of the questions raised during the Q & A. Listen to the recording to hear the responses.
- “Are some of the newer carriers like Oscar and Harken pushing the older carriers to take more of an active role or movement toward digital commerce?” (33:18)
- “What are you seeing from your clients as the top challenges in moving to digital commerce?” (34:34)
- “What is your definition of a payer?” (36:34)
To learn more about Softheon and its cloud-based Exchange solutions, contact John Saunders: [email protected], (631) 216-7491
The HealthCare Executive Group
The HealthCare Executive Group (HCEG) is a national network of select executives from across the entire healthcare spectrum; coming together to continually learn, grow, share and reshape the healthcare industry. HCEG periodically sponsors webinars. For more information on becoming a HCEG member, see Why Join HCEG? on the HCEG website. You can also follow HCEG on Twitter and like them on Facebook.
