Providers are an Audience Too

One aspect that seems to receive limited attention from health insurance companies is the provider audience (at least in my experience). Health care insurance companies place such a hyper focus on members, gaining members, driving them to their facilities, and educating them on their health to use more services. Yet, the ones administering that care often are overlooked in meetings and strategy. Providers receive a far more limited span of attention than members do. However, they’re just as important.

Providers are an essential piece of a health care insurance companies audiences. Without them, who provides care to the company’s members? In my experience, it seemed to me that the company I worked for did not want to make an effort to understand providers. For instance, a constant question I asked was, “Can someone define a provider for me?”The most often response was “Someone who provides medical care.” Certainty and the smugness oozed from their tone. I will concede, it was a decent starting point. However, I had a follow-up question, “What about the companies that PCPs hire to do their billing? Or pharmacists? Or how about the employees who work on submitting claims and prior authorizations?” These questions sparked silence, and in some cases, glares.

Now, I do not ask these questions to show arrogance or to put people down. I ask the questions because I want people to think. Using a general definition of provider is okay, however there are particular sections of the audience that can be narrowed down. Lumping them all together as one idea is doing a disservice to the health care insurance company. Just like their members, they can segment out their provider audience, making their communications more effective.

I have sat in plenty of meetings where the phrase “Providers are dumb” became a consistent refrain. Now, that never quite sit well with me. Here’s the disconnect, providers are not dumb, they don’t live and breathe in the world the insurance group does. Their vernacular and processes are different, which causes the confusion which let’s macho, foolhardy leaders toss the ‘dumb’ moniker throughout the organization. I don’t think some of the leaders realized the narrative they were perpetuating with their offhanded remarks. Providers help the members of the company and the last thing the company should do is call them such names behind closed doors.

The providers are a key audience, because, who’s going to treat your members if you ostracize all your providers? Often I heard “Meet the member where they are.” Why can’t we do that with providers. Insurance companies push updates and changes on providers without 1) getting their input beforehand, and 2) throwing it out with limited notice and minimal training. These companies talk at providers, thinking that the provider mind works just as their insurance mind does.

Here’s an example, I went to the pharmacy to have my prescription refilled. Overnight, some company had updated their software system. I asked if anyone came into shadow them or get their input on what wasn’t working and what they liked about the new system. They didn’t. They barely had a notification about it. The basics of implementing any system update is to attain feedback from those who will be using it. Not only that, but also identifying key pain points of the current system. These consultations help to build a better platform. But the company I worked for never did such things. They thought they knew what was best.

Here’s my point, providers are a key audience for health care insurance companies. However, they received far less attention from these companies than the members do. In addition, these companies make no effort to understand providers. It becomes even more confusing for them when they have different processes to follow from the various insurance companies to do the same task. For instance, credentialing differs depending on the insurance company, meaning Cigna has a different process than United that providers have to follow. This lack of attention on the provider audience causes friction and it makes helping the member more difficult because insurance companies do not want to meet providers where they are. If these companies want to provider better services and better health care, they need to start engaging their providers in a more beneficial way.