Introducing Applets to +Oscar | Oscar | Blog | hioscar Blog | Oscar
Introducing Applets to +Oscar
Applets are a new technology that makes it easier for members to navigate their healthcare journeys.
Behind the Scenes
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We built +Oscar with the end-user (patients, members, internal staff) in mind. It’s our goal to engage consumers, streamline processes, guide members and patients to the right care, and empower them to take charge of their healthcare. We drive these objectives while leveraging our learnings and insights to innovate and iterate on our platform.
After observing the challenges our clients faced engaging patients, our team went to work developing a product that could reduce the engagement barriers that prevented organizations from delivering the outcomes they desired.
Applets are a new technology that makes it easier for members to navigate their healthcare journeys. They are bite-sized, digital experiences that prompt members to complete the right action at the right time, all within a HIPAA-compliant interaction. Since Applets are accessed by the simple click of a link, they can be leveraged through many communication channels including email, SMS, secure message or letters – all without the need to download an app or create an account.
The History of Applets
Despite industry leading engagement rates, Oscar Health Insurance started seeing a decline in account creation as they began expanding into new markets and lines of business. A variety of hard-to-control variables, from varying degrees of tech literacy to general disinterest in downloading one more app or creating another account can make engagement difficult.
Applets were developed to remove one of the barriers to adoption by leveraging a lighter weight authentication approach, allowing for Oscar Health Insurance to duplicate and distribute its rich digital experiences to members without an account. Because Applets are channel agnostic and can be sent through existing communication channels (e.g. emails, SMS, secure messages, letters), they provide a creative way for rich, relevant, and personalized content to be delivered directly to members in a way that fits their existing digital engagement behaviors.
How Applets are Built
When Applets were developed, one of the requirements was that the solution was flexible and easy-to-use by non-technical team members. This would allow a variety of teams to utilize the feature and easily incorporate it into their member engagement initiatives. While Applets are digital web experiences, a lack of technical skills or resources is not a blocker to building one.
We have designed our Applets ecosystem in a way that leverages various templated screens that can be customized and connected via a basic configuration file. This architecture allows our engineering team to focus on building the technology that powers these experiences, while our operational teams can configure Applets in under 15 minutes to meet many specific needs in a member, patient, or provider journey.
The Benefits of Using Applets
The applications for Applets are endless, and the value they can bring to an organization is wide-reaching. In fact, the average completion rate for a survey deployed within an account is ~30%, whereas the Applet survey completion rate is over 52%. When prompted to answer a customer satisfaction (CSAT) question, 92% of respondents give their experience a “thumbs up” indicating the positive customer response to the new Applet experience.
Below are some specific use cases demonstrating how Applets deliver value.
Improve Customer Experience
In an effort to improve Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) measures, Oscar Health Insurance’s Medicare Advantage team utilizes Applets to improve the way members access essential forms, a measure assessed in the CAHPS survey. Historically, a Care Guide, a member of Oscar Health Insurance’s customer service team, was required to mail a physical document to a member to fill out and return.
With Applets, Oscar Health Insurance digitized the forms experience and can share the forms with members directly via SMS. This reduces the friction created when members have to print out and physically mail in documents. The user has a better experience, and completion rates go up. Everyone can benefit when Applets are incorporated. By improving a seemingly mundane experience like accessing forms, plans can see a meaningful improvement in CAHPS measures.
Support Risk Adjustment Initiatives
Most health plans and risk-bearing providers have initiatives dedicated to driving members and patients to complete an annual appointment or health assessment in order to properly capture their population’s risk. Last year, Oscar Health Insurance incorporated Applets into an existing Virtual Health Assessment (VHA) program encouraging members to complete appointments virtually. This allowed for simpler self-scheduling and reduction in reliance on outbound calls. In 2022, 62% of VHAs were scheduled directly through Applets. It took each member an average of just 90 seconds to complete the scheduling process.
Save Administrative Costs
Applets can also reduce the time spent on costly service interactions and provide a way for members to self service. Every year, health plans see a large spike in the number of questions about ID cards between the months of January and March. Oscar Health Insurance’s overall cost to triage inbound requests increases 11x with the increase in demand. Oscar Care Guides save meaningful time when they can simply send a member an Applet link to their digital ID card and basic educational material on their benefits, versus walking the member through account set up or outlining the information aloud. Alternatively, members can completely self-serve these requests by texting “IDCARD” to automatically receive an Applet link with their ID card. With the improved efficiency, Care Guides can dedicate more time to members who require higher touch assistance.
Medical Cost Management
Getting members with chronic conditions to proactively engage in their own care is tough, but this engagement is essential to improving healthcare outcomes and reducing overall costs. Many health plans offer members disease-specific care management programs, but enrolling members and driving consistent engagement is challenging.
Applets support the use of rich content like images and videos, which allows Oscar Health Insurance and other clients to educate members on these programs in a more thorough and meaningful way. Additionally, using a secure channel like Applets allows us to pull in personal health information, personalizing the experience and more successfully encouraging members to enroll, saving them money on potentially costly care, and improving health outcomes. We’ve found that going the extra mile to explain why a program matters and personalizing that explanation to a member, can help boost enrollment rates.
Applets provide our +Oscar partners an opportunity to expand their digital footprint, enable novel use cases that are difficult or impossible today, and most importantly, better engage patients at critical moments in their care.
About +Oscar
When Oscar Health, Inc. first launched an insurance product in 2012, it was clear that legacy technology didn’t fit the needs of a modern healthcare organization. The challenges were vast, including the inability to connect systems, streamline consumer experience, and automate laborious processes. So Oscar Health, Inc. innovated, building the first health insurance company built around its own full stack technology. This backbone technology is called +Oscar. And by leveraging +Oscar, Oscar Health has been able to deliver an innovative, member-centric approach to healthcare that has earned the trust of approximately 1M members.
+Oscar is now available to other healthcare organizations who are interested in improving healthcare experiences, driving administrative efficiencies, delivering better outcomes, and supporting the shift into value-based care – all with the ultimate goal of creating a healthier, happier population.
