Highmark Drives Innovation with Secure Mobile Messaging Platform

With robocalls and scams rampant, people just don’t answer the phone as much anymore when the source is unknown. That’s a problem for health insurance plans like Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield. 

“We need to connect with our members who are at risk for health issues. These are the members most in need of their health plan’s built-in support and services. But they often don’t pick up when called,” says Dr. Benjamin Edelshain, Highmark’s Vice President of Clinical Engagement & Digital Innovation. 

Highmark solved the problem by piloting on a mass scale two-way secure mobile messaging for clinical engagement. Their efforts resulted in the Brand Excellence Award for Brand Innovation from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.  

“We are proud to receive this national award for the innovative ways we are reaching our members with higher clinical risk,” says Dr. Edelshain. “Unlike outbound phone calls alone, this added channel meets members in their comfort zone with an outreach method they prefer -- texting. 

“By overlaying this new functionality atop the existing model for clinical support, we gave members an expanded choice: text, phone call or both,” he adds. “Our pilot was already underway, focusing on transition of care (from hospital to home) and wellness outreach, then COVID-19 struck, and we leveraged the new channel to drive higher member engagement with critical digital health resources amid the pandemic to help keep our members educated and safe.” 

Of course, texting itself is not the innovation. Rather, it is the technology that now enables secure health conversations and Highmark’s accelerated adoption of it. “Our new two-way secure mobile messaging mimics the consumer experience of texting, but within a secure browser,” says Dr. Edelshain. “This enables our member engagement in an additional channel very familiar to our customer, and the ability to discuss sensitive health matters, fully HIPAA compliant.”  It doesn’t replace the outbound coaching phone call model. It coaxes and nudges members in a comfortable way to take action: read a text, then click to chat. Once connected, the member and clinical coach can have a text exchange, progress to more in-depth phone coaching sprinkled with texts between coaching calls, and even go on to maintain the conversation over a period of time.

In collaboration with Relay Network, Highmark accomplished an effective, scalable model, and increased clinical engagement to improve members’ health, delivering the tool to more than a quarter million of its members. “As a result, we saw higher engagement and an enhanced member experience,” he says. Seeing the success, Highmark pivoted quickly from pilot to full-scale implementation. 

The mobile outreach campaigns don’t just promote health and wellness, they promote a relationship. “Our mobile member engagement is operationalized to be one-on-one and personal, with the same coach, to drive meaningful conversations and build relationships for the member,” says Dr. Edelshain. “Adding two-way secure texting gave Highmark members an option beyond a transactional, often short, phone call to a more fully engaged experience at their own pace. During our pilot, the average number of back-and-forth messages between member and coach was 9, with the highest being 116.”

Highmark Inc., doing business as Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, serves approximately 2.6 million members through the company’s health care benefits business and hundreds of thousands of additional members through the BlueCard® program.