Which Health Plans Rank Highest In Digital Experience? Leave a comment
Cigna Healthcare leads the way in digital experience among commercial health plans, while UPMC Health Plan ranks highest among Medicare Advantage plans, according to a new report from JD Power.
The U.S. Healthcare Digital Experience study, published on Tuesday, is based on evaluations from 7,687 members of the 17 largest MA plans and 16 largest commercial plans. It measures satisfaction across five factors: visual appeal, navigation, information/content, speed and telehealth.
Among commercial plans, Cigna Healthcare achieved a score of 684 points on a 1,000-point scale, while Premera Blue Cross came in second with 682 points and UnitedHealthcare ranked third with 672 points. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey ranked last with 605 points.
For Medicare Advantage, UPMC Health Plan received a score of 676 points, followed by Healthfirst with 671 points. Devoted Health and UnitedHealthcare tied for third with 665 points. Cigna Healthcare, while highest among commercial plans, ranked last among MA with 604 points.
JD Power also found that overall, 38% of commercial health plan members use their plan’s digital app, an increase from 31% last year. However, among Medicare Advantage plan members, app usage has dropped to 20%, a decline of 4 percentage points from last year. The report noted that MA member digital channel use increased during Covid-19 but has been decreasing ever since.
Satisfaction in mobile apps increases with “member tenure and channel familiarity,” the report added. Mobile app satisfaction with Medicare Advantage is 665 points out of 1,000 among members who have been with their plan for more than five years, 102 points higher than members who have been with the plan less than a year.
In addition, 76% of commercial health plan members and 74% Medicare Advantage members said they “definitely will” continue using their health plan’s mobile app when they have a great digital experience, with satisfaction scores of 800 or higher. By contrast, only 29% of commercial plan members and 21% of Medicare Advantage members say they “definitely will” keep using their health plan’s mobile app in the future if they have a poor digital experience (overall satisfaction scores of 500 or below).
The JD Power report shows the need for health plans to focus more on digital onboarding and educating members, according to Eric McCready, director of digital solutions at JD Power.
“Healthcare can be an incredibly complex world to navigate, with members in a wide range of different customer segments approaching their health plan’s mobile apps and websites with varying degrees of digital sophistication and due to dozens of individual use cases,” McCready said in a statement. “The good news is that once health plan members start spending some time familiarizing themselves with their health plan’s digital channels, their overall customer experience improves significantly, but, on average, it still takes a fair amount of time to get fully up to speed.”
Photo: Vertigo3d, Getty Images
