Electronic Health Reporter

Just like other segments of the financial industry, insurance services providers have been severely shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasing rate of unemployment in many places and the rise in claims have contributed to a significant misalignment of premiums collected and claims paid. In addition to the lingering level of uncertainty surrounding premium collectability, the current disruptions are also making it difficult for companies to calculate premiums for years to come.

On the other hand, the ongoing crisis has also served as a wake-up call for many insurance companies. It’s a must for insurance providers to fully make use of the latest health insurance technology at their disposal if they want to minimize the negative impacts of the pandemic on their business. Access to real-time information and making data-driven and timely business decisions are keys to ensuring that the company will remain afloat despite the currently unstable business environment.

One of the resources that many health insurance companies underutilize is patient data. This valuable resource, when managed by digital solutions and used properly, can assist health insurance providers in many ways, including:

Delivering Better Outcomes for Individual Patients

Consolidating information gathered from different medical facilities and practitioners has always been a challenge for more traditional health insurers. The lack of both a unified information repository and open yet secure channels for exchanging data prevents medical care providers from consolidating patient information. In turn, this makes it more difficult for medical professionals and insurance companies to ascertain the patient’s condition and the treatments they need to effectively and quickly address or manage their health issues.

A platform that can store extensive patient history and allow data sharing, then, will help healthcare and insurance providers improve the outcome of the cases they handle, all while keeping costs to a minimum. Such a platform will assist medical professionals and insurance companies in determining the cause of the patient’s issues in a timely manner, thereby preventing the condition from worsening or requiring more expensive medical interventions.

Creating More Personalized Experiences for Policyholders

A happy client will find no reason to leave their insurance provider. Insurance companies must therefore strive to deliver the level of customer experiences that their clients expect from them. This is only possible if an insurance provider can offer timely and personalized experiences to each and every client on their list.

Again, a unified patient data repository that can be accessed by different healthcare providers is essential to achieving this goal. With this tool, healthcare providers will be able to review their client’s extensive history, even if the said client is visiting the medical facility for the first time. Knowing the procedures that the patient has undergone before will help medical professionals and insurance companies determine which mode of treatment is best suited to their particular case. Health care providers can then offer more effective options for the patient as soon as possible, all without necessarily making the client undergo the tests and ineffective treatment methods that have been tried before.

Building Better Products That Clients Will Benefit From More Quickly

Finally, a digital platform that can manage patient information in real-time provides insurance companies with a wealth of data that they can use to design and implement products that their clients will appreciate. Using analytics, for example, an insurance provider can see emerging areas in healthcare that their current products don’t yet offer sufficient coverage for. Alternatively, they can take a look at their existing insurance contracts and compare how and when the clients use the product. This can lead them to discover sections in their insurance contracts that can be revised to suit the current needs of the market.

Using their digital data management platform this way allows the insurance company to swiftly design and roll out new and improve health insurance products. At the same time, this also reduces the future cost of research and the process of designing new insurance packages.

The saying “prevention is better than cure” is something that everyone’s heard of at least twice in their lives, but the expression rings truer than ever for the current generation. The ongoing pandemic has highlighted just how much stress a highly contagious and aggressive disease can exert on individuals, families, and even nations and global corporations. Experts have deduced that it will take society in general between several years and a few decades in order to fully recover from the negative effects of COVID-19.

Health insurance companies play an important role in this recovery process. To play their part well and give their organizations the best opportunities to thrive, these often traditional-leaning businesses need to use modern technologies that are designed to keep up with the ever-changing lifestyles and health situations of their market. Maximizing digital technologies today will not only help insurance providers weather the challenges they currently face; this strategy will also set them up for success in the coming years.