Educating Customers Will Be Key to Balancing Customers Expectations With Healthcare Plans
Highway to Health’s host welcomed Ryan Coplon, CEO at HealthWallet, about trends within the healthcare industry and how technology is helping to address evolving consumer needs. HealthWallet is a mobile app that is changing the way healthcare is delivered by simplifying the healthcare system for consumers.
Coplon discussed how HealthWallet came to be as well as his journey to becoming a member of an organization working to transform the customer’s journey within this complicated system. Having started in employee benefits consulting, Coplon moved on to become a partner at a firm that built and managed self-funded health plans.
However, over time, the revelation that as health plans became more sophisticated in design, they also became more confusing for plan members. So, the idea for HealthWallet was born.
We realized there was an “opportunity to leverage mobile technology and try and simplify that experience for originally our health plan members and realized we had a commercially viable solution that other health plans and health plan administrators could benefit from,” Coplon said.
He went on to discuss the trend of healthcare consumerism as well as the gap between the expectations of the consumer and the behavior of the consumer. Noting that this trend has risen to the forefront of healthcare challenges, Coplon opinioned “that the thought of applying traditional consumerism behavior in a healthcare model is something that is not going to line up in a way that’s commercially effective.”
And while consumers may not be happy with this reality, the fact remains that the healthcare system is not designed for consumerism. Consumers are dictated by the confines of the benefits program they have as well as the complexity of the healthcare system.
However, there is a middle ground that can serve both consumers and plan providers – this is where HealthWallet thrives. “The crossroads between convenience and cost-effectiveness is where healthcare consumerism has a chance and that infrastructure needs to be laid at a strategy level related to plan design and optimal entry into the healthcare system,” Coplon explained.
Make health care options financially beneficial and more convenient and consumers will engage with the system in a more productive and positive way.
