For David Holmberg, CEO of Highmark Health, the large integrated health system based in Pennsylvania, the impact of COVID was apparent early on. In February of 2020, he received an early morning call from Cynthia Hundorfean, CEO of Alleghany Health Network.
“[Hundorfean] called me on a Sunday and said, ‘I need you to come into the office, we’ve got a meeting going on.’ I walked into that meeting in my running clothes. There were 20 doctors and clinicians, and they laid out what they believed was the worst-case scenario. And my ask that day was to call the governor, pull the fire alarm, and say, ‘This is really exploding.’ It was all on the basis of data,” said Holmberg during a discussion at the 2021 Health Evolution Summit, Payer Insights.
From that moment on, Holmberg said, Highmark relied on real-time data to keep track of what was happening from patients and members. He says the company created a Naval aircraft-like command center with multiple screens and data points that tracked real-time cases, admissions into the hospital, death, success stories and much more. Having this data allowed Highmark to focus their efforts in engaging members, and double down on the things that had a high return, both economically and from a purpose standpoint.
Holmberg was joined by Dawn Owens, CEO of Triple Tree Holdings, Felicia Norwood, EVP and President of the government business division from Anthem, and Paul Tufano, Chairman and CEO of AmeriHealth Caritas. The four leaders discussed how COVID has had an impact on their health plan’s membership engagement and re-emphasized organizational priorities around culture, resiliency and value-based care.
Membership engagement during COVID
AmeriHealth Caritas has similarly leveraged data and analytics to track members during the COVID crisis, said Tufano. The organization used this data to find the COVID hotspots that were impacting high-risk members of the Medical Assistance (Medicaid) managed care health plan. And then Tufano said it was a matter of prioritizing outreach for those members. Beyond this one-on-one engagement, Tufano said the company reached out to local community organizations to increase vaccine uptake and promote other critical public health measures.
“At times, we turned our wellness and opportunity centers, which we have in our markets, into vaccination centers, and engaged with our members and community leaders to talk about the importance of vaccination,” Tufano said. “And I think the one thing for all of us in this part of the health care industry to really underscore is the importance of us doing more for those of our neighbors, our fellow Americans who have challenges that became more acute during the pandemic.”
He said that the pandemic created a closer relationship between the company and its Medicaid members, which in turn has made the organization recommit to addressing the social determinants of health. “We need to be focused on the life outcomes of our members in the Medicaid space,” Tufano said. The company also prioritized mental health services and whole-person care for these underserved populations, he said.
At Anthem, Norwood said the company’s 80,000 associates spent countless hours calling millions of members to see how they were doing and if they had access to the fundamental essential things you need to get through every, single day. Like AmeriHealth Caritas, they also partnered with community organizations to increase membership engagement during COVID. Norwood said that it’s imperative this collaboration continues after the pandemic ends.
“I think the engagement we’ve had with community-based partners during this time is something that absolutely should continue. That is the only way we’re going to be able to reach our members. It’s really what it means to be committed, connected, and invested in the communities that we serve,” Norwood said at the Summit.
Culture matters and continues to matter
Norwood credits the culture of the organization, led by the vision of CEO Gail Boudreaux, for ensuring the company stayed aligned in trying to engage its members and achieve other important goals.
“We had culture conversations. We communicated often with associates. We gave our leaders the tools to lead, trying to help them understand why culture mattered,” Norwood said. This was especially important when workers had to go remote, she noted. “It was the north star. It was what mattered in terms of being able to make sure we had alignment across the organization during this time, with turbo charge, communication and collaboration. And giving the tools to managers to lead remotely, which was something that they really haven’t had to do before.”
To Norwood’s point, the executives said that the pandemic showed the importance of collaboration and organizational alignment. “This moment in time has crystallized that importance and how foundational it is to the success of high-performing organizations seeking to serve important populations,” Owens said.
