Lina Gallardo, Director, Product Management Group Markets, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

SuperNova Award Category

  • CoIT & The New C-Suite
  • Next Generation Customer Experience

The Company 

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBSMN) was chartered in 1933 as Minnesota’s first health plan and continues to carry out its charter mission today as a health company: to promote a wider, more economical and timely availability of health services for the people of Minnesota. Our goal is to make a healthy difference in our 2.6 million members lives’ each day. 

The Problem

With the growing popularity of high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts, consumers are increasingly responsible for shouldering a greater percentage of healthcare costs, yet fewer than 20 percent of health plan members understand their benefits or how to maximize their healthcare budgets. According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, health insurance premiums have risen 13.3 percent per year; employee’s contributions to those premiums have risen 14 percent per year; and, yet, wages have only been rising 4.2 percent per year. Seeing better utilization and understanding of benefits education as a potential key to controlling rising healthcare costs, we piloted a new and innovative program that employs user friendly content, arcade-style games and game mechanics to make benefits education fun, easy and impactful, and to teach consumers how their benefits work and how to make value-based healthcare decisions.

The Solution

BCBSMN partnered with Change Healthcare to implement Healthcare University, which employs videos, quizzes, arcade-style games and game mechanics – including points, badges and leader boards – to support the industry shift to healthcare consumerism. Change Healthcare worked with BCBSMN in the beginning stages of Healthcare University content development to ensure the platform met the needs of our employees and members, and BCBSMN piloted the program over a six week period with its employees.

The Results

Our goal was to recruit 20 percent of our employees to the platform, but registration rates exceeded that target by 90 percent. In addition, each user interacted with the system 27 times on average, completing 80 percent of the total curriculum, and employees awarded the platform an A- for overall satisfaction – significantly improving employee engagement and demystifying health insurance and benefits. Based on the successful pilot, BCBSMN will introduce the platform to millions of members during the upcoming open-enrollment period.

The Technology

Change Healthcare utilizes a private virtual cloud infrastructure provided by Peak 10 and the videos are housed with Vimeo.   Healthcare University content, the gamification design, rules engine, activity tracker and reporting were developed in-house using the following open-source technology stack:

·         Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.3 (Santiago)

·         Ruby 1.9.3-p194

·         MySQL 5.5

·         Sphinx 0.9.9 (r2117)

·         Nginx 1.0.15

·         Rails 3.2.8

·         Redis 2.4.10

·         Unicorn 4.3.1

·         HTML5

Metrics

The results of the pilot far exceeded our baseline goals. Of the 3,582 BCBSMN employees who had the opportunity to access Healthcare University, 1,343 employees (38 percent) registered, which was 90 percent higher than expected. These users watched 9,100 educational videos, took 7,500 quizzes, and played nearly 20,000 games – completing 6,350 courses (an average of eight courses, or 80 percent of the curriculum, per user) with nearly perfect quiz scores of 98 percent. Prior to rolling out Healthcare University, we had no way to measure the utilization or effectiveness of our employee benefits education.  After we roll out the platform to our members prior to this year’s open enrollment season, it’s our ultimate goal that the metrics will translate into smarter healthcare decision making and better use of health benefits tools and programs.  

Disruptive Factor

BCBSMN is part of the larger Blue Cross Blue Shield system, the largest insurance carrier in the nation; one in three Americans is covered by BCBS, and 82 percent of Fortune 100 companies have BlueCross coverage for their employees. We have the opportunity to change the behavior and improve the benefits education of millions of healthcare consumers with Healthcare University, helping to reduce healthcare price disparities across Minnesota and potentially nationwide in the future. Combined with the proven effectiveness of Ways to Save Alerts and other Change Healthcare solutions, Healthcare University has the potential to drive significant consumer engagement and ultimately reduce healthcare costs in this country by billions of dollars. 

Shining Moment

The Affordable Care Act has spurred rapid change in the healthcare industry – and consumers need to get up to speed quickly before open enrollment this fall. We were impressed that  participants were not only willing, but eager to understand how these changes will directly affect them and their families, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of our employees replayed the educational videos two, three and even four times before taking each quiz. Knowing our employees truly “got it” gives us confidence that they have the ability to successfully navigate the coming changes in the healthcare landscape and – looking forward – that we can adopt the platform with our nearly 3 million members in Minnesota.

Consider this feedback, which our employees provided when asked about their Healthcare University experience:

“Healthcare University provides a unique way of getting information. The interactive approach to learning – especially the feeling of competition – made the courses enjoyable and memorable.” – Health Guide

“I really like the video, quiz and gaming format.  The modules are an appropriate length and focused, which is good for people with short attention spans and those who are unfamiliar with healthcare in general.  The whole psychology of competition and earning points really is engaging!” – Senior Account Manager, Strategic Sales & Account Management

“It was nice to have such a variety of tools to learn from. I was eager to complete each video and quiz so that I could get to the game.  I also liked being able to earn points…I just kept trying to get more points!” – SSR

“I like that the courses talked about ways to save.  I think people want to lower their healthcare costs, but don’t know where to start.” – Account Administration Analyst

“Lots of tools try hard to be fun and engaging, yet very few achieve that goal.  Healthcare University was fun!” – Health Guides

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

Nearly 2.7 million people depend on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to manage their health needs. Blue Cross is the largest health insurance plan in the state, with members located throughout the Twin Cities and across Greater Minnesota. The company is part of a nationwide Blue Cross and Blue Shield system that serves nearly 99 million members in the United States. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota provides customized solutions for a range different customers, including individuals; employers; and federal, state and local governments.