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.
Happy to be here. Thanks, Jacob.
Absolutely. And before we dive into everything we
wanna 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?
Happy to. I've, been here at HCFC for
for twenty years, which seems either like a
short day or a 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 of trying to find solutions
for all of them.
In the health care space, sometimes we call
that a product, we call it an offering,
we call it things like, I think we're
gonna dive into today.
And the summary of those things is, like,
what are we doing to solve their health
care problems and keep their employees,
you know, as best we possibly can. So
that's that's why I get up and think
about every day if that helps.
That is super helpful, and appreciate you giving
the audience some background there, Brian.
So 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 that that
ultimately made this necessary and and how the
platform actually works day to day for an
employee on the ground or or the employer
that needs it.
Yeah. Happy to. I I think
this concept and and this thing we're launching,
like most good things, are are born out
of necessity. Necessity. Right? They're born out of
truly solving a problem. And
what we continue to hear, from employers across
the country is is frankly exhaustion
out of time,
themselves in terms of navigating this landscape that
we're gonna go into.
Some rough numbers of the thousands of digital
point solutions that are out there would would
kinda 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, we you know, HCSC and and
all carriers work with some of these digital
assets,
today.
The 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 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 gonna create an a network, if you
will, Jacob, of those solutions?
That's the first step, just building the technical
integration.
Then who's gonna 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. Like, are 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 health care 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 of those things.
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 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 on the outcomes that they promise. And
so what's the what's the vetting criteria for
the solutions that are gonna 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?
Yeah. Great question. I think there's two two
lanes 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 the moment where
you influenced the member and proven
that each and 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 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 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 you 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.
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 we've also heard you
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 it's complicated, and it takes time.
Mhmm. And some companies have seen mixed results.
So,
ultimately, what is 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?
Yeah. I I think I think speed is
the biggest thing that we held true there.
And what I mean by speed and 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 in
long timelines.
By going with a solution like Unity Health
Hub, you 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 wanna try it on my own.
I wanna do this, but that shouldn't take,
you know, an eight to ten month
three party,
IT project to get off the ground. Should
it? It's a question they ask. So we
we think this solves a big part of
that problem.
Absolutely. So trying to remove that that big
IT barrier that a lot of employers
often face, the the investment time and and
money. It's funny by selling it with another
IT company. Right? But one that Yeah. Focuses.
Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Brian, what else are we missing here? Anything
we haven't touched on about the Unity Health
Hub or anything else you wanna mention while
you've got the ears of a a lot
of other health plan colleagues from around the
country?
Yeah. I think the part we maybe didn't
hit as much yet is, like, what is
that gonna 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. Right?
They they don't make that leap to go
pull up a different thing and continue their
digital journey there.
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 to continue to click
through things. So that's the one piece I
would really want people to understand the vision
of.
Yeah. No. And definitely appreciate appreciate you adding
that on there. Very important to for 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 and
looking forward, to hearing how this all goes
for you,
as this continues to roll out. Really appreciate
it. Yeah. 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. So Absolutely. Door's open
anytime. Thanks for chatting with us.
Thank you. And to our listeners, if you'd
like to listen to more podcasts from Becker's
HealthCare, you can visit beckershospitalreview.com.