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Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Payer Issues
podcast recorded, the third annual spring Payers Issues
roundtable.
I'm joined today by Tai Wong. Tai, can
you please introduce yourself and tell us a
little bit about your role in your organization?
Yeah. And thanks for having me here again.
I'm Tai Wong, cofounder and CEO of Angle
Health. And, Angle Health is an AI native
integrated health care company. Our core products are
custom full service health plans for employers.
We offer fully insured and level funded health
plan products and serve thousands of small and
medium small and medium sized, businesses and tens
of thousands of members across the country today.
Balancing affordability and quality is a constant challenge
for health plans. How is your organization innovating
to manage the cost of care while maintaining
or improving member outcomes?
Yeah. That's a great question.
I think one thing that's important for us
as a full stack health plan offering and
especially in the level funded space where we
are the TPA, the plan administrator,
and the stop loss carrier,
we really see ourselves as fully aligned with
the member and the employer when it comes
to improving costs and, improving,
health outcomes. So we're constantly building and launching
new products and partnerships,
with the best in class solutions across health
care access and treatment
Through our integrated data platform and proprietary AI
and machine learning capabilities that we've built here
at Engle Health as well, we are able
to surface insights for our care and advocacy
teams who are then able to really engage
our members into these programs that best meet
their health care needs, whether it's chronic disease
management or a complex course of care.
This also serves to really ensure that our
members access the most appropriate,
high quality, and cost effective care available to
them. In many cases, that means delivering preventive
care to avoid a major future event like
an ER admission.
Mhmm. And so member satisfaction is obviously invention
to thrive in today's super competitive health care
market.
What experience or engagement strategies have proven effective
for your organization, and what are your KPIs?
How are you managing success?
Yeah. So we've learned a lot through the
launch of our angle advocacy program, which we
launched last year, and it's essentially a concierge
care navigation service for our
highest acuity members. One of the biggest learnings
that we had was that people just want
a real human to engage with. Ideally, someone
that's knowledgeable that can help them navigate their
care journey.
And the reality is that even when someone
has a PCP,
a team of specialists,
many many still feel like they're left to
navigate the complexities of the health care system
on their own.
The status quo is that no one really
expects to get help, least of all, from
their health plan. So we found that it's
really up to us to engage. And and
when we do, the response
has been overwhelmingly positive.
To your question about how we measure that
success Mhmm. I would say, ultimately, the feedback
that we're getting from our members,
these are people who are in incredibly sensitive
situations. They're facing difficult circumstances, not just with
their health, but also in many cases, their
financial well-being. So Mhmm. When we're able to
provide a service that, in the worst case,
provides a bit of moral support and in
the best case, really,
saves lives and provides thousands of dollars in
savings to our members. You can imagine
why members and employers don't just view us
as a health plan, but really as a
partner in health. Mhmm. Mhmm.
You and I chatted last year,
on the same, I believe at the same
conference on the same show. And, you know,
a lot in health care has changed since
then, and it's gonna be continuing to change
at a super rapid pace.
And
looking ahead, I'm very curious. What do you
see as the biggest opportunities for payers
to lead the charge in transforming health care
delivery and driving better outcomes for all of
the stakeholders involved? And how can leaders such
as yourself,
take a step in this direction now?
Yeah. That's a great question, and I think
that's a really big question.
I would say AI is easily the largest
opportunity for payers today to evolve how they
operate and and to deliver services that ultimately
result in better, more efficient delivery of care
to consumers.
At angle through our integrated data platform, we're
already seeing significant operating leverage across our operations,
especially with the AI,
models and the and the tools that we
have, which result in lower administrative costs and
ultimately savings for our members and employers.
The AI tools that streamline operations, whether it's
for policy management, eligibility,
claims processing,
clinical decision making, or anything else
will fundamentally change the way that health plans
and providers operate,
which provides efficiencies back into the health care
system, and I think will also free up
providers to spend more time doing what's,
most important, which is treating their patients.
So, I think the the best thing that
leaders can do right now to take a
step in that direction is to really foster
a culture
of innovation and and,
embrace this new technology.
Ty, as someone who's really utilizing
AI in this space
and AI, you know, even where it was
a couple years ago versus now is night
and day,
what are some of the things you could
see as use cases or ways that might,
like, totally impact your industry in a couple
years that we might not even be thinking
about now? Like, what are you most excited
about that might not be being utilized right
now?
Yeah. That's a great question. So I think,
the pace of advancement in AI is is
immense. Every single day, something new comes out,
and if you're not keeping up with it,
you're already behind.
I think there's still a long way to
go when it comes to many of the
more advanced capabilities that people are really working
on, whether it's in,
the ability to leverage AI to truly make
clinical decisions or to even on kind of
the education side where we now have companies
that are,
starting and trying to replace things like medical
school with with AI.
I think I think those I think
some of those areas are extremely
exciting for what it means when it comes
to lowering the the barrier to
accessing care and and and to more people
really entering
the workforce in the industry.
And and here at Engel Health as well,
we really believe in a human in the
loop, philosophy when it comes to AI. And,
I think we're really seeing that as we
as as a lot of these new use
cases and companies,
form to
to build these kinds of tools that will
really change
the way that,
a health plan and and and really the
health care system operates across the administrative side
and across the clinical side.
Awesome. I love that. Well, Ty, thank you
so much. Again, it's been a pleasure chatting
with you, and I really appreciate you joining
us today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. It's
a pleasure as always, and, we look forward
to chatting again next year. I do too.
Thank you so much.