Today, health plans are challenged to improve customer service and member satisfaction that has failed to surpass customers’ expectations. Also, commercial health plans are lagging behind other industries in consumer satisfaction metrics, including convenience, and user-friendliness. Hence, providing apt telehealth options could provide an opportunity for payers to address some of these concerns.
Telehealth is a serviceable healthcare delivery tool since many state governments have lowered legal barriers for telehealth adoption. According to a recent survey, it has been noticed that over 64 bills were approved by 34 state legislatures that expanded telehealth reimbursement, detached reimbursement barriers, and elevated participation in interstate licensure agreements. These bills have created new policies such as increased opportunities for behavioral healthcare, implementing telehealth services into schools, and supplying broadband internet expansion in rural areas to maintain telehealth delivery.
Commercial payers have made trials with telehealth and remote care benefits to effectively improve care coordination, healthy behaviors, and beneficiary satisfaction. Telehealth benefits and services can provide additional support for payer wellness programs that keep beneficiaries healthy and out of the hospital. Payers can address challenges of medication non-adherence by offering benefits that utilize telehealth, text messaging, and digital engagement to ensure beneficiaries maintain their prescription treatments.
With Telehealth and digital health solutions, payers can serve their employer customers and enhance employer-sponsored insurance products. Hence, healthcare payers should take keen notice of enormous opportunities that telehealth and remote care can provide to health plan value. But it also needs to understand that extensive investments are required to provide telehealth services.
Payers that have fresher as well as digitally savvy recipients in areas with high broadband connectivity could provide them with similar healthcare experiences and on-demand healthcare purchasing. Equally, payers that have large groups of rural recipients may need to invest in additional broadband or technology to provide telehealth services with lower internet connectivity.
Moreover, the secret behind successfully providing telehealth lies in working with providers to fairly negotiate reimbursement underpayment parity laws. Payers can define fair and reasonable rates based on patient consequences and cost-effectiveness of healthcare.
With these myriads of benefits that telehealth and remote care have to offer, it may prove the new standard of care for the future bringing layers of benefits to its users.