Breaking Down Barriers: Improving Medicare Advantage Member Engagement & Experience with Technology

Growing Opportunities & Challenges in Medicare Advantage

The current growth opportunity in Medicare Advantage has been clearly documented, with the number of individuals age 65+ rapidly increasing by 36% between 2009 and 2019 and a larger number of those over 65 preferring Medicare Advantage plans over traditional Medicare.  

Managing this line of business entails key challenges unique to MA plans:

• Individuals over 65 represent a disproportionately high cost group, with more chronic conditions and modifiable risk factors.  
• CMS oversight of MA plans to ensure great care to MA members including focus on member satisfaction, quality scores, rapid disenrollment, scale, and cost - with revenue tied to these efforts

• Going into 2023, member satisfaction will be given even greater focus, as it will drive 57% of overall Star ratings.  

• Attracting & retaining MA members and limiting member disenrollment in a very competitive marketplace  

As MA plans look to overcome these challenges, drive the opportunity, and meet the needs of their members, they need scalable and cost effective solutions to engage members, break down barriers to managing their care and increase satisfaction with their MA plan.  

But how can MA plans do this?

Leverage Digital Health

Research has shown that when older adults are offered digital health programs, they can better manage their chronic conditions through positive behavior changes and lifestyle modifications. Though you might be concerned about your older members engaging with digital health, research suggests one reason why older adults may engage less with digital health tools is because they are simply less likely to be offered access to these tools in the first place. Digital solutions are a great way for health plans to support & engage their MA population.

Choosing the Right Digital Health Solution for your MA Population

The key to offering digital solutions to your MA population is to find the right one that can help engage members, assist them with managing their chronic conditions, and help drive member satisfaction, all while being scalable and cost effective. At Lark, with our conversational AI, we’ve taken the approach that the best digital health solution is a tech layer that engages members and gets them the information and resources that they need while not creating additional silos of data and health coaching. As a plan, connecting with new members to let them know which resources are available to them and making them feel engaged with both you and their health is critical. A strong digital health solution can help with this, as it is more cost effective and scalable than live outreach and can also integrate with your ecosystem to navigate members and empower them to take charge of their health and care journies. In fact, our research has shown that older adults actually engaged with Lark more than their 35-64 year old counterparts and that greater engagement with Lark was associated with higher rates of successful weight loss. 

Lean on Lark to engage and reach all of your MA members

Optimizing your chronic condition management ensures that all members have access to care and that care managers can practice at the top of their licenses and focus on those who need the most care. Because Lark is driven by on demand AI health coaching and not live health coaches, we help optimize the operational expenses associated with those live resources, and do so in a scalable and cost-effective way. Lark coaches members on all of the data it receives and gives you greater visibility into your member population. Additionally, Lark can address key quality metrics and member satisfaction pain points at scale, thus increasing your reach and helping you compete in the MA marketplace. 

By helping you execute an effective member activation, care activation, and chronic condition management strategy, a digital health solution like Lark can help you overcome the challenges associated with caring for this disproportionately expensive group, increased CMS oversight of MA plans, and attracting and retaining members while helping you drive opportunity in this line of business. 

If this is something your plan would like to learn more about, please watch our webinar “Breaking Down Barriers to Medicare Advantage Members” or get in touch for a demo.