Health Plan Weekly

Health insurers have ramped up their use of digital tools to improve customer satisfaction, but still have more work to do — particularly as utilization returns to normal two years after the pandemic’s start. Customer satisfaction is lagging after several years of improving scores, and digital tools are disappointing some enrollees.

J.D. Power’s 2022 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study identified call center customer support and digital tools as “key areas in need of improvement,” the advisory firm said May 26. “Health plan members expect a personalized, hands-on experience when dealing with customer support and they expect a seamless digital experience when engaging online. Health plans have some work to do to get the formulas right,” said Christopher Lis, managing director, global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power.

Several new studies have found that telehealth flexibilities introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic increased access to care for patients who would otherwise struggle to get it. However, the same researchers say that telehealth can’t solve health care disparities on its own — and that lots of work needs to be done to make sure that the incremental improvements made possible by improved telehealth access are durable.

A study published in the May edition of the journal Health Affairs by researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that Medicare patients “living in the most deprived neighborhoods had the highest rates of telemedicine use….Overall, our findings are encouraging, as they suggest that the Medicare telemedicine coverage waiver could improve access to health care for people in the most disadvantaged US neighborhoods without worsening disparities.”

Health care consulting firm Avalere Health has been sold to Fishawack Health, by previous owner Inovalon Health. In a letter to clients disclosing the deal, Avalere President Elizabeth Carpenter said that Avalere would “retain our logo and brand,” and “your client teams will remain the same and there will be no change to your current business relationship with Avalere. Everyone you know and love from Avalere is joining Fishawack, including all of our practice leadership.”

A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that little information is available about the role that short-term health plans played during the COVID-19 pandemic — and that state regulators are not watching the industry closely. Short-term health plans are not required to meet all the standard benefits mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Per the report, “GAO found that limited and inconsistent data hinder understanding of the role short-term plans played during the COVID-19 pandemic for those who lost [employer-sponsored insurance], such as whether they were used by consumers as temporary coverage or as a longer-term alternative to ACA-compliant plans….State officials in the five states with plan sales were not able to report on the role of short-term plans for consumers, as none of them collected data on the duration of short-term plan coverage.”

While inflation hits consumers at car dealerships, airline counters and grocery stores, health insurers and hospitals also are seeing inflationary pressure, particularly with the so-called Great Resignation underway and labor costs skyrocketing.

The Labor Department reported on May 11 that the Consumer Price Index rose 8.3% over the 12-month period that ended in April 2022, down only slightly from the four-decade high of 8.5% reported in March.

“There’s no question that the labor market is tight. So, as you think about inflation, we hear it certainly from our provider partners, and we see it in certain parts of our own business,” Anthem, Inc. CEO Gail Boudreaux told investors during an April 20 conference call to discuss first-quarter 2022 financial results, per The Motley Fool.