Health care is complex, and the process of getting the care that you and your loved ones need can often be difficult. We at Regence have always been committed to making health care easier and lives better for the members we serve. In the last year, Regence has doubled down on this commitment with the creation of a Member Experience Office.

For this episode of HealthChangers, host Ashley Bach speaks with Charity Duckett, director of member experience and engagement at Regence, about how we’re using innovation and compassion to improve how our members interact with us and get their health care needs met in an increasingly complicated marketplace.

Listen to the full podcast episode on the player above. Below are some highlights, which have been edited for length and clarity. 

AB: Why did Regence decide to create a Member Experience Office?

CD: We've always been committed to making health care easier and more accessible and more affordable. It's actually one of the reasons I love my job. I get to work with incredibly smart and passionate people who wake up every day focused on doing just this. Member experience is one of our strengths. It's what we're known for, and it's why our customers buy us.

Everyone's working really hard on each of their pieces of the puzzle, but we've been missing that full picture view. That's where the Member Experience Office comes in. We're bringing all of these great efforts together in a coordinated way to make an even bigger impact for our members.

We want to be thoughtful in how we provide members with the tools and resources they need when they're making the decisions they have to when they're seeking care. Our Member Experience Office works across the company to challenge us as a health plan, and as employees, to consider how our work impacts the member journey and look for ways to improve. Every Regence employee can have an impact on member experience by framing problems from the member’s perspective.

Today's members, who receive so many services now instantly and over digital channels, expect more convenience, personalization and responsiveness. We need to meet those expectations from our members.

AB: What are we looking to address in each of our member’s experience with us?

CD: There are really three key places where we have to hit it out of the park in order to build a really good, trusting relationship with our members. We've got to provide them with clear and concise health plan information. This is in the beginning stages of the member interacting with us — how we're onboarding them onto a Regence plan, educating them about what their health plan covers, and helping them connect with a provider. Those are really important things to get the relationship started off on the right foot.

The second area is preparing members to engage with their benefits. Benefits can be really confusing and complicated. This is using personalization and engagement to educate our members about the benefits that are relevant to them and their individual needs and how it applies to them. “What does it mean for me?”  

And then the third area is to help members understand and plan for costs. Nobody likes a surprise bill. This is helping our members navigate the cost of health care, which can be expensive. We all know this. This is how we help our members find lower cost options for care without sacrificing quality and health outcomes.

AB: How do we frame member experience?

CD: Our goal is for members to walk away from every interaction with us feeling like we somehow simplified it. Regence made it easier for them.  Regence got them the information they needed. And then finally, support; that they feel, “Regence is walking alongside me as my partner and advocate in my health care journey.”

AB: Member experience is really interesting in that there is work on these bigger initiatives, but so much of it is also about improving those day-to-day interactions that our members have with us as a health plan.

CD: Our members just want things to work. We’re working on initiatives that take months or years to improve processes, but we can't lose sight of the fact that our members just want a seamless experience. They want us to get those basics right in terms of processing their claims and how they interact with their payer and how we interact with the provider. You know, the role we play, Ashley, is really important. I think that members have been really clear with us on what they want us to do and not do.

AB: It does seem like a part of our Member Experience Office is getting employees on board, right? We know that making lives better is part of our Cause. But it does seem like it’s important, too, to communicate about member experience internally and make sure that everyone understands how committed we are to this as an organization.

CD: One hundred percent. We actually have three pillars to our strategy, and the first one is culture. It's really building that member-centric culture, where we all understand and recognize that member experience balanced with affordability is the winning equation — things like ensuring that we have a baseline understanding of what drives a good experience, how we measure if we're good at experience or not. And also having tools and just regular problem solving, things available for employees as they're working to improve processes or actual member experiences. So there's culture, and then there's outsized opportunities, and then there's how we influence the organization and just get better at problem solving in a really member-centered way.

AB: What are some examples of projects that we’ve already introduced to members?

CD: We've got some really cool ones this year. The first one is a mobile member ID card. We've all been there kind of looking through our wallets for our health insurance ID card, and our members can now use the Regence app to pull it up in Apple Wallet on your iPhone or in Google on Android.

AB: Are there some other examples of projects that we've already introduced?

CD: We've got provider badging now. What you'll see when you search for a provider on Regence.com, you can see the performance ratings for physicians in primary care and about 19 specialties. And next to their name, you'll see badges for their rating. So, it will tell you if they're high quality and low cost. You know, so often you go and you search for a provider, and you get a list of them, and they maybe like ones that are near you–that's usually the most common sorting mechanism; but it's really hard to tell who's high-quality and who's not, because we've all had experiences with different levels of quality care.

AB: Is there an example of where we're impacting the member experience in behavioral health?

CD: Yes, reaching out for support for behavioral health often happens during really vulnerable moments. We know that many of our members look for us for guidance on finding mental health care. So, we've got a new behavioral health navigation and triage program that really improves how our members can access this type of care. When our members call customer service, they now have access to a dedicated interactive voice response line. It connects them directly with our customer service professionals who are specially trained in behavioral health support.

For complex cases, these customer service professionals can provide seamless transfers to our clinical team. So you can have a clinical resource help you understand where you need to be navigated to for whatever it is you need in the behavioral health care space.

We've also simplified how members can find behavioral health providers on Regence.com. Members can now find in-network virtual behavioral health providers through the Behavioral Health tab under “Find Care.” This streamlined navigation reduces the steps needed for members to connect with behavioral health care services. This makes it a lot easier to find the type of behavioral health care resources they need.

AB: So much of the member experience is about data and about member feedback. How do we make sure we have the right information to make the right improvements?

CD: Listening to our members and their needs is critical in all the work that we do in member experience. A really good example of a program we have in place is our Voice of the Customer program. It's for all lines of business, and it ensures that every member story can drive really meaningful improvements in care. So as a part of this Voice the Customer program, we've set up what we call “listening posts,” at key stages in the member experience, where we reach out to members and we ask them for feedback. We really want them to tell us how we're doing, how it went in these really important moments that matter.

When members identify an issue, our customer service team reaches out directly to help them get a resolution. So, for instance, if someone wasn't successful in searching for a provider and getting an appointment, we reach out to them and help make sure that happens. These listening posts can be after a pharmacy visit, after a doctor's appointment, or searching for a provider.

AB: It's really important to talk about data because that's such a critical part of this work, but gathering and measuring data is ultimately one piece of the puzzle of member experience, right?

CD: The data helps us understand where we can have a lot of impact for members, but the fuel for that is the passion that comes from employees genuinely wanting to make things easier and better for members. It's every employee here at Regence that wakes up every day, really passionate about making things easier and better for members; that's what really powers us. And our best work emerges when we blend actionable insights with genuine care for the people that we serve.