Wellness rewards: A tool for VBC physicians to boost patient health
Minoti Parab, M.D., FAAFP
Lead Medical Director
Bio
Dr. Parab is a lead medical director for Medicare in the Mid- Atlantic region. With a background in outpatient family medicine and telemedicine, her passion drives her work in physician wellness and engagement internally through leadership development and externally through hospital-provider communication and improved processes.
With preventive care paramount to patient long-term well-being, value-based physicians in 2020 took advantage of incentives from Humana’s wellness program, Go365®, to help entice Humana MA members with Go365 on their plans to obtain preventive screenings and maintain healthy behaviors. Value-based healthcare providers focus on achieving gap—closure goals.
Members associated with value-based physicians accounted for roughly 83% of all Go365 rewards-qualifying activity in 2020.1
Additionally, these members received over 7.4 million preventive screenings, completed nearly 1.4 million fitness activities and participated in almost 400,000 social and health education activities.
Go365 is promoted regularly to value-based healthcare providers to encourage their patients who are Humana members with Go365 on their plans to earn rewards or eligible activities like routine cancer and biometrics screenings. Members earn $10-$30 gift cards—per screening—to a variety of national retailers.
The success of this program really highlights the power of engaging our patients as true partners in their healthcare.
Dr. Ben Kornitzeragilon health’s chief medical officer
Why it matters:
Healthy behaviors and prevention are critical to identifying problems early and potentially preventing severe illness and unnecessary medical costs. By Humana rewarding members for healthy behaviors and annual screenings, primary care physicians are better able to close clinical gaps in care so their patients—and their practices—can achieve better health outcomes.
Annual wellness exams and preventive screenings are key to promoting better health outcomes. A patient who has at least one annual wellness visit per year is 122% more likely to have a colonoscopy and 75% more likely to have a mammogram1—two essential methods of cancer screening.
The way forward:
Value-based partner agilon health experienced an uptick in member engagement in wellness and prevention activity through the incentives provided by Go365. Heavy promotion of the program and its wellness benefits by agilon was a top goal of its communications campaign composed of welcome emails for new members and a quarterly e-newsletter.
MA members associated with agilon who visited Humana’s website for wellness information had an 83% gap-closure rate.
“The success of this program really highlights the power of engaging our patients as true partners in their healthcare,” said Dr. Ben Kornitzer, agilon health’s chief medical officer. “As a primary care physician, it is incredibly gratifying to see how thoughtfully designed health plan incentives can really help move the needle on the quality programs that value-based physicians are working toward with their patients.”
