Hello, everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the
Becker's Payer Issues podcast. Thrilled today to be
joined by two special guests.
Rona Lee is SCAN Group's chief development officer,
and Rob Scruggs is SCAN Group's chief digital
officer. Rona, Rob, thank you so much for
taking the time to be with me on
the podcast today.
Well, thanks for having us. Thank you for
having us. Yeah. And before we dive into
everything we wanna talk with you both about,
Rona, can you tell us a little bit
more about yourself, your background in health care,
and what it is that you're doing today
at SCAN Group?
Yeah. Sure.
I currently serve as the chief corporate development
officer here at SCAN,
where I oversee our portfolio of diversified assets,
as well as investments, joint ventures, and other
partnerships that we might do.
I like to joke that I started my
health career when the first episode of Grey's
Anatomy came out and ended in my high
school chemistry class.
But, truthfully, it started when my grandfather was
diagnosed with liver cancer, and it made me
wonder how I could make an impact in
the future to make someone else's
family's life a little bit better through either
preventative care or early diagnosis
or otherwise. And so that took the shape
of Rold and Finance to start and eventually
evolved to venture building and investing over time
before joining SCAN.
Thanks, Rona and Rob. How about you?
Thanks, Jacob.
Yeah. I
serve as the chief digital officer here at
Scan. And I think in simplest terms,
I characterize it as I oversee our digital
strategy and road map, really driving consumer like
experiences
that we use to leverage,
you know,
in leading technologies and enhancing our member journey
to streamlining
operational efficiencies and driving organizational growth through this
channel, really leaning into this channel in new
and differentiated ways that we haven't in the
past as both a lever for our business
as well as for driving
better member experiences and and
have about 20,
in the channel leading digital transformation efforts across
different industries like financial services and retail,
consulting and entertainment.
Like Rona, my journey was a little personal
to arrive at health care with that type
of experience.
My passion was really trying to apply
what I could from a a digital standpoint
to helping fix health care.
Fantastic. Well, we both we really appreciate you
both taking the time to sit down with
us. And I wanted to get started by
talking about Scan Group making its tenth investment
into the league platform, which, as I understand,
is going to help the company and the
health plan digitize and personalize
member experiences.
And that includes the launch of the Scan
member portal this coming spring and then followed
by a new member app this coming summer.
So, Rob, what were some of the specific
member needs or pain points that you have
been seeing, are seeing across across your members
that you're really hoping to address through this
mobile first experience?
And how does the League platform
help to meet those
goals? Yeah. Thanks, Jacob. I I look. I'd
start with
you know, Scan has partnered with League to
help us take,
at a high level,
a more connected
ecosystem approach in delivering against our digital engagement
strategy and moving to a more consumer like
experience. And with respect to solving for those
member pain points, I'd say there's three key
areas of focus for us,
personalization,
access, and self-service.
So, you know, it's our intent to
drive a much more personalized member experience,
also provide easier access to critical care information
and relative educational content,
and also really amplifying,
more easy to use self-service
features that help manage a member's care journey.
Ultimately, though, we're looking to drive better outcomes
with an experience that improves member satisfaction
with,
you know, through this channel that better supports
members throughout their care journey.
It improves in member education around health conditions
and overall benefits usage. It should make it
easier for members to access the services and
support that they so
critically need from SCAN with things like easier
navigation,
more intuitive,
content, and more meaningful
benefits explanations, and, you know, and we also
provide content in multiple languages.
So we're we're trying to make it easier
for members to engage and stay connected throughout
this process, throughout their their their journey, their
health care journey.
And, also, we provide opportunities for them to
connect, more seamlessly with our member service teams.
You know, this is an omnichannel experience,
and so we wanna make it easy on
the member when they may have a higher
touch support need.
Our objective is really to drive a better
experience that connects these touch points more seamlessly
across the omni omnichannel health experience
because it is omnichannel,
and provides a more holistic view into the
member's overall health journey, but focus squarely on
that support and access for them.
Absolutely. And then, Rob, you mentioned this is
all about making and improving,
members' health outcomes. So can you expand a
bit on some of the key features of
the new scan member app and and how
they are going to be aiming to improve
those outcomes for your members, particularly when it
comes to what you mentioned with better health
engagement and managing their benefits.
Sure. Sure. And we've really taken the time
to shape the experience around
the most frequently used tasks and behaviors that
we see from members to ensure that we're
solving for those top use cases. And so
both the, you know, the portal and the
app have been designed to drive stickiness and
pull folks into that ecosystem and drive more
engagement with the member through things like health
journeys and the health journeys experience that we're
launching, which is an orchestrated
series of next best actions, including scans health
risk assessment
that users can,
leverage to shape their specific health journey. For
example, you know, here, a health journey is
a series of data driven, you know, data
driven preventative actions
that SCAN determines for each member based on
the data we have
for them, which is an you know, an
experience presents in a more engaging way based
on that data and how we're using that
to translate,
you know, an experience more personalized for them
and the goal being to to to drive
an experience in a more personalized way that
meets the most important needs for that particular
member to help close those identified care gaps.
And, you know, we're using data to motivate
users in a way that's relevant to them,
focusing on what's meaningful or important to them
in their particular health journey, like tying health
outcomes to leading a more active lifestyle with
friends and family.
I think understanding your benefits is also key
to driving more successful outcomes, and we're providing
easier access to navigate a member's benefits with
a more simplified view of cost and coverage
details.
We've added key self-service features that include
easier access to ID card management and access
to key documents anywhere like EOB statements and
bills. We also offer, you know, prescription management
where members can more easily track their prescriptions
and medication adherence status.
We're also looking at, you know,
providing a health dashboard
where members can capture key key health metrics
around personal health data for things like blood
pressure or BMI or other health attributes and
track those in a consolidated view, consolidated
dashboard.
We also have, you know, what we're calling
a get care feature,
which enables members to access and interact directly
with their care and support teams to better
understand
and give them confidence in what their care
options are.
Wow. So it sounds like based off everything
you just said, Rob, this is going to
be a very transformative
offering
Rona Skin has made several strategic investments in
innovative tech companies in the last few years.
So how does this partnership with League specifically
fit into the company's broader vision for using
tech to improve health care for for your
members?
Yeah. That's a great question.
I think SCAN's partnership with League really is
rooted in our commitment to listening to our
members and adapting to their evolving preferences.
I mean, we've been doing that since our
inception.
We
are proud of having translated these tailored patient
needs into population specific health plans. We launched
the industry's first semi product for women and
the LGBTQ
plus population.
We've also had a fantastic cohort of seniors
in the community join us as peer advocates
to support their peers navigating the MA and
aging journey along the way.
And this partnership with League is just a
reflection of
how we believe that, you know, keeping the
member at the center of the mission is
critical to everything that we do every day,
and this is just enabling us to do
it in a more digital first and personalized
way.
I mean, I'm sure these statistics aren't new
to people, but smartphone adoption among older adults
have doubled in the past ten years, and
66%
of older adults are using technology in all
different sorts of ways to simplify their daily
life.
This is very different from the MA population
a decade ago. And so
being able to work with the league are
allowing is allowing us to meet seniors where
they are by delivering a mobile first and
personalized healthcare experience that they're expecting from healthcare
payers today.
And at the same time, this allows us
to remain more focused on the human touch
and empowering our teams at every touch point
with these seniors to build more meaningful connections
to support their health and independence.
And such a good point that you just
mentioned there, Rona, that digital engagement amongst seniors
has really grown exponentially
over the last decade. I think the natural
follow-up question there is, how do you see
the role of the portal and the app
then evolving
over the next few years?
So that was a big question.
Rob,
I'm sure you have thoughts too. And we're
we're used to not being able to read
perfectly into a crystal ball, but,
I think that the
the the only thing constant in health care
and consumer preferences is change.
I think that the more that we can
get to an n of one to understand
what people need and,
you know, what exactly
their health care needs are,
how they want us to engage with them,
how do we empower our agents and people
with the next best action to actually
preempt
what consumers actually may need in this situation.
Those are all things that we can we
see very applicable
ways this to evolve in the next few
years.
Yeah. And I I'll I'll just
echo that and and build that. Look. There
there's no question that we are dealing with
the incredibly engaged digitally engaged audience. I mean,
when you think about
the the generation that created the Internet is
now our audience.
Right? So I I would say at SCAN,
we are always looking at what's next in
terms of innovation. We've gotta get the basics
right, but we're also looking around the corner
and making sure that we're prepared, you know,
for for what they need from us in
this channel when they need it. And we're
considering several impactful enhancements and upcoming releases, things
like,
you know,
caregiver access and, you know, a caregiver tailored
experience
specific to those caregivers,
or, you know, for our members,
continuing to enhance those self-service capabilities and, you
know, even some of the basics around better
ID card management,
replacement of cards, and digital IDs, you know,
online,
the ability to submit, you know, com
claims more easily online and change providers or
plans more easily online.
I could see more experiences around gamification and
rewards, incentivizing members to complete health care actions
to drive those outcomes
that we both wanna see through rewards and
gamification
experiences,
additional supplemental benefits integration. When you think of
a more seamless integrated experience around things like
dental and transportation and other types of
supplemental benefits to give folks easier access to
those.
And, of course, we have to talk about
AI. Right? And and think about benefits AI
or an AI enabled
service that simplifies complex benefits and really breaks
down that information to enable members to find
answers
quickly and more easily and complete tasks faster,
or an AI driven care finder to better
guide folks through you know, in determining the
right providers at and facilities at the moment
of need and the ability to schedule with
those providers more easily. And lastly, I'd probably
say I I could see a role for
immersive experiences as you think about
the continued sort of evolution and innovation with,
you know, payers and providers leveraging virtual or
augmented reality to deliver services or capabilities
in a way that drives more interactive experiences
with members at the point of need and
on demand.
Absolutely. Well, clearly, a lot of exciting things
on the horizon from these offerings. So hope
you will keep us updated as as these
products continue to evolve.
But before we go, Rona, we've got a
lot of health plan leaders listening in from
all over the country.
Any final thoughts or final bits of advice
you wanna offer them?
There's so many things, but I think
oftentimes in as complicated of an industry as
health care, it's it's very easy to lose
sight of
what we're what how what got us into
the industry to begin with, you know, and
between Rob and I with personal experiences that
landed us here, I'm sure that resonates with
a lot of people listening in. And so
I think
this sounds so simple, but we need to
just stop thinking of pace patients as
a statistic or a data point as a
case and start seeing them as people with
unique needs and expectations.
That's how you really understand and can be
in their shoes of how do they actually
want to engage with you and what you're
trying to help them with.
I think as Rob has probably seen in
financial services and hospitality and transportation, etcetera, and
myself with other industries,
other industries have set the bar for what
people are expecting from us in terms of
convenience and delight.
Technology can help us get there in closing
the gap, but it's not the whole answer.
So I hope,
everyone sees
technology and the speed of innovation as just
a tool in our toolkit to empower collaboration
between stakeholders,
particularly between pairs and providers at this point,
to really amplify the human touch and not
replace it.
Fantastic. And, Rob, how about you? Your concluding
thoughts for us?
I would just echo,
you know, Rona said it very well, and
I just say it's gonna be a a
a balance of finding the right balance. This
is for the you know, in our lifetime,
gonna always be an omnichannel
high touch experience. And,
you know, being the digital person, I will
never say there digital is always the answer.
And so I think there is a a
thoughtful means and way to incorporate it into
that end to end health journey that, you
know, complete holistic
experience in a way that's thoughtful and meaningful
and complements the experience. And so
I think as long as we look at
it from that point of view and use
it as a service, you know, to an
end for the member and their benefit,
that, you know, that's gonna be the successful
path forward and drive the outcomes we wanna
see.
Wonderful. Well, Rona, Rob, thank you both so
much for taking the time to sit down
with us and for sharing your insights with
our listeners. We really appreciate it.
Thank you, Jacob. For having us.
If you'd like to listen to more podcasts
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