Tips for Boosting Health Plan Member Retention

While every plan will experience some amount of member churn, with the right approach you can minimize that percentage and retain more health plan members. We asked our member engagement experts to weigh in on the best practices for boosting health plan member retention rates. Here’s what they had to say.

Is it really necessary for every organization to have a retention plan in place?

Absolutely! Competition for members is only growing, and it’s a lot more affordable to keep the members you have than to recruit and acquire net new ones. Plus, each member is directly tied to your bottom line. For example, with each Medicare Advantage member bringing in an approximate $11,000 in reimbursements per year, there’s a lot at stake for every member lost or if your member churn is higher than anticipated.

How can you retain more health plan members?

You can retain more members by building positive experiences across the entire member journey. These include:

• Providing a positive welcome and member onboarding experience, including having a strong welcome call
• Predicting early who is at risk for disenrolling due to things like poor experiences, and then getting ahead of their decision to disenroll by proactively reaching out to them with communications that will change their mind
• Managing member expectations and preparing them for upcoming changes with clear communications during the ANOC period
• Building relationships and brand loyalty by offering physical, financial, emotional and social wellbeing support throughout the year

Can you actually know who is likely to disenroll from your program?

Yes. Did you know that Virgin Pulse’s predictive analytics can precisely identify with up to 90% accuracy which members are going to disenroll so you can build communications plans to target these at-risk members with precise retention efforts? The secret to doing this is our consumer data, including SDOH insights, and predictive models which are proven to provide an early view into member behavior and if they are at risk for disenrolling.

How should you reach out to your health plan members?

Each member is different, so you can’t use a one-size-fits-all or a one-and-done approach to communicate with them. You need a coordinated approach that uses multiple channels, like email, automated calls, text and direct mail, to communicate with members over the entire plan year, and without bombarding them with overlapping or competing messages. Virgin Pulse makes this easy by leveraging our multi-channel, multi-cycle communications capabilities to help you reach up to 95% of your targeted audience, and running targeted campaigns for each of the touchpoints mentioned above on your behalf. 

When should a member retention strategy start?

A good health plan member retention strategy should start well before day 1, so consumers start off on a good foot with you while they are actively searching for and selecting their plans. You’ll want to provide members a consistent experience during the courtship, onboarding and insured phases, so they see value in what you’re offering, build loyalty toward your brand, and stick with you year after year.

Getting your member retention strategy nailed down is a lot of work. Virgin Pulse can help you develop and execute a strong health plan member retention strategy. And we deliver results like a 30% decrease in disenrollment rates across targeted populations.