5 insights on CX transformation for BCBS health plans

I had the pleasure of participating in a recent Google Cloud webcast alongside Highmark Health’s Chief Analytics Officer Richard Clarke and Google Cloud’s Global Health Plan Solutions Leader Amy Waldron about consumer experience (CX) transformation, specifically for Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans. 

Here are my five takeaways from our conversation: 

1. Recognize that  CX transformation is mission critical

For BCBS organizations, it’s crucial to understand the market forces that are driving an exponential focus on CX transformation. Those include: investments in operational efficiency, regulatory mandates, chronic care and wellness programs, increasing customer demands to simplify and personalize CX in healthcare; and cloud technology accelerating the delivery of personalized health experiences at scale.

As digital transformation spreads throughout the healthcare landscape, payer organizations will increasingly need a CX strategy in order to provide a viable consumer product and differentiate themselves from their competition.

2. Define your ‘why’ and let that guide your strategy 

To fundamentally redefine — if not entirely reimagine — the health plan member experience, C-suite executives need to prepare for seismic shifts in consumer expectations toward seamless and simple healthcare. Delivering personalized and engaging member experiences is critical but difficult, as CX initiatives touch nearly every aspect of a payer organization’s structure. The more clearly defined the mission driving this CX transformation, the more realistic it is to deploy and manage.

3. Establish ‘velocity’ partnerships 

BCBS organizations need partners to integrate tools and data sources across a very complex ecosystem and to do so quickly to both control investment expenses and reduce the financial risk of long-term IT development and deployment cycles. The right partners share mission and financial risk to enable rapid innovation, speed-to-value, ROI and also lay the foundation for innovating even faster in the future. 

4. Create ‘capabilities’ partnerships

Executives should also be deliberate in the partner selection process to focus on dramatically increasing access to digital capabilities outside many payers core competencies. The ability to enable data-driven CX initiatives that are individually tailored to members, for example, requires a deeper understanding of the member base in order to personalize CX and drive business objectives, such as notably expanding market share, increasing revenue and reducing costs. Achieving those requires personalization at every stage of the member journey.  

5. Prepare to scale initiatives from the outset 

With a CX transformation strategy developed and the right partners aligned, payer C-suite executives should be planning beyond initial test and pilot projects to understand how to scale those into additional relevant areas of the enterprise. While healthcare organizations currently have adopted numerous point solutions, what’s needed now is a new tech stack that integrates care, cloud and CX.

Watch the entire webinar for BCBS organizations.