Resource Center:
Strategies for Improving Health Plan Member Retention and Loyalty
Retaining members is an issue of increasing concern to managed health care organizations. Aggressive new member acquisition, common in the early stages of managed care, is giving way to an emphasis on winning members' loyalty. Loyal members are unlikely to switch to competing plans. To gain a member's loyalty, a plan must continually develop its connection with the member by providing high-quality information, assistance, problem-solving, and care. Member retention requires an ongoing commitment to nurture the relationship with each and every member.
Step #6: Refine Provider and Staff Interaction Skills
The interaction skills of providers and staff are extremely influential in building member loyalty. Providing training, when these skills are found to be lacking, usually reaps substantial benefits. This is particularly true when providers are asked to serve new types of populations (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid). Vaughn Keller, associate director of education at The Bayer Institute for Health Care Communications in West Haven, Connecticut, estimates that some 25 percent of voluntary disenrollment can be directly attributed to communications problems. Both patient and physician satisfaction and health care outcomes can be enhanced. Improved physician-patient communication has been demonstrated to decrease the likelihood of malpractice litigation and promote better adherence to therapeutic regimen.
Physician-patient communication, in particular, continually emerges as a key indicator of overall medical quality in the minds of most health plan members. Doctors at the Fallon Clinic in Worcester, Massachusetts, discovered that honing their communication skills greatly increased member satisfaction — and their own, as well.
We also know that most members’ loyalty is stronger to their physician than it is to the plan. Several studies have indicated that individuals will try to follow their physician rather than their plan when changes are made and/or more options become available. Actively soliciting feedback from providers and their staffs about interaction and support issues with the plan (as well as issues and concerns of members) is a very important activity in creating a mutually beneficial relationship with these important constituencies.
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