Breaking down barriers to unlock deeper health engagement: Q&A with Sarah Donnelly

Health engagement has historically been somewhat of an enigma. It’s something that the healthcare industry agrees is important, but success has been few and far between.

League’s Chief Product Officer, Sarah Donnelly, is here to change that, as she is pioneering a new frontier in engagement-driven healthcare. What follows is Sarah’s outlook on health engagement and her recommendations on how it can help tear down key payer barriers like member trust, data fragmentation, and AI implementation.

Q: What trends or industry shifts are driving the urgent need to improve health engagement?

A: Over the last five to ten years, consumers have gained more options in healthcare, partly due to digital health solutions becoming accessible and affordable. This increased choice, combined with rapidly evolving technology in other industries like banking, retail, and entertainment, has raised consumer expectations. Healthcare organizations now face pressure to keep up digitally to avoid losing business, a risk they didn’t have 20 years ago.

Q: Is the potential loss of business the primary reason payers need to prioritize health engagement?

A: While loss of business is a significant driver, another major factor is the financial impact of delayed care. When healthcare is complicated to understand—whether it’s costs or available treatments—individuals are more likely to postpone decisions. This delay in getting needed care directly impacts payers’ long-term financial bottom line.

Q: Are there other risks associated with payers not prioritizing health engagement, beyond the cost of delayed care?

A: Absolutely. There’s a significant and growing reputational risk for payers. Public sentiment about health payers isn’t the best right now, and if members aren’t engaging with their insurance, that negative perception is exacerbated. Meaningful engagement can help shift this perception, which is crucial as payers work to move the needle on gaining consumer trust.

Q: What product or feature developments is League undertaking or exploring to enhance health engagement?

A: At League, engagement is central to our development process, especially leveraging evolving AI capabilities. One exciting project is a conversational user interface agent that provides simple, easy to digest responses to questions about coverage and eligibility. The next step is for this agent to help users take action, like finding a nearby physical therapist who accepts their insurance and even booking the appointment.

Beyond transactional capabilities, we’re developing “journey actions” that use AI to predict which health actions are most beneficial and likely to be completed by an individual. This aims to present actions in a consumable, non-overwhelming sequence to build momentum and help overcome barriers like cost, transportation, or fear.

Q: What are some challenges payers face when using AI in healthcare and data technology for member engagement?

A: Data availability is a major hurdle; if the data isn’t there, AI can’t predict accurately. However, a key difference now is the ability to harness learnings from a broader knowledge base, like 200 years of medicine, rather than relying solely on a payer’s internal data. 

It’s also important to remember that perfect data is a fallacy and payers don’t have the luxury of time on their side. They need to save themselves from the pitfalls of inaction and meet the data where it is now to get started. Even if data repositories remain in fragmented siloes, it’s crucial to start somewhere so the data foundations can evolve alongside new engagement solutions and innovative AI models.

Trust is another huge issue. AI can “hallucinate” or provide incorrect information, so we must build it safely through small, controlled steps with continuous quality control.

Q: Can you share any case studies or early impacts from these initiatives?

A: We have an early example with a customer who embedded our Health Journey capabilities into their existing app. This specific module increased the likelihood of a user completing a health action by three times.

In another pilot involving an AI-powered benefits experience, users reported 87% satisfaction with only a 4% hallucination rate. Our ultimate goal with customers is to help them connect members to their existing point solutions, like mental health or telehealth services, especially when members don’t know about them or understand their benefits.

Q: What are your best practices for payers looking to improve health engagement?

A: My top advice is to stay laser-focused on the outcomes you want to achieve. There’s a lot of competition for digital “real estate” on a home screen, but you need to be crystal clear on what your engagement efforts should accomplish for your business—whether it’s driving telehealth adoption, improving NPS scores, or enhancing health outcomes.

Avoid blending everything together, which can water down the digital experience and make it feel like “flipping through the yellow pages.” Focus on those key outcomes, show success, and then re-evaluate.

Q: What final thought would you leave people with when thinking about prioritizing health engagement?

A: Continue to invest deeply in knowing your members. Understanding your population through research helps ensure you’re speaking the right language and delivering relevant messages. What resonates in Jacksonville, Florida, might be very different from what resonates in Manhattan, New York, and regional needs for care access vary significantly. Apply these learnings to your digital engagement strategies. 

To learn more about the rise of health engagement and the tangible business value it offers to payers’ bottom lines, read our latest report with Healthcare Dive featuring leaders from SCAN Health Plan, Capital Blue Cross and Arcadia.