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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 UnitedHealthcare's
commercial business. Amy, thank you so much for
taking the time to be with me on
the podcast today.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Absolutely. And, before we dive into everything we
wanna 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?
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, my uhc.com. And then I also
lead our rewards and incentive programs for the
commercial business and really focus 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.
Fantastic. Well, let's talk about one of those
tools, Amy. As 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?
Yeah. Absolutely. It's,
we're very excited about it. It launched about
six to eight weeks ago now,
and we did a 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 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 overarching
strategy around really trying to simplify the health
health care system
for our members, particularly around guidance and navigation.
We're all aware of how complex the health
care 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 of what
it is, and we score those providers across
that algorithm zero 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.
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.
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
gonna 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 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 it's really bringing forward the member's 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 perfection
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,
board certifications or not. Those are the types
of factors we can layer in with that
personal fit profile.
Absolutely. No. This this sounds very, very beneficial
from the member's perspective.
And and as I understand it, UnitedHealthcare actually
made over 400 digital enhancements
last year alone.
So so how does SmartChoice 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 from your investment in consumer facing
tech?
Yeah. For sure. We have done a a
lot of work to really improve our digital
experiences. You know? 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 health
care experience
to really allow for that that true kind
of shopping
component
that you get with most other things within
your daily life except health care. Oftentimes, health
care 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're 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 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 health care, while challenging,
a simpler experience.
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, 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 and
value based care?
Yeah. I certainly think the data is a
key part in bringing forward that personalized approach
to health care. And, certainly, we've seen that
evolution over the past, you know, 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, you know, key differences that
are gonna matter most to me based off
of my health care needs, and maybe they'll
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 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 gonna be able to unlock
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 and make decisions off of, we're hoping
that we're really gonna be able to build
out something that provides for that more consumer
choice,
and the evolution of health care as we
look ahead.
Wonderful. Well, Amy, what else are we missing?
Are there any final thoughts that you'd like
to share with our listeners today?
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 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 health care
decisions. But if they aren't aware of them,
we can build as many tools as we
want, and it's not gonna 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 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 thirty to ninety 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 capabilities, but engaging them in them as
well.
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.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
This is great. And to our listeners, if
you'd like to listen to more podcasts from
Becker's Healthcare, you can visit beckershospitalreview.com.