Last year, WebMD Ignite launched Coach, a platform that aims to make it easier for care management teams to engage with patients and health plan members in a more personalized way.

Now, the team is building on that foundation by adding new capabilities to the program. Through Coach, care managers can now connect with patients through text message in real time, offering a more convenient and direct avenue for communication.

Adding ways care management teams can connect allows them to better meet patients in the way they prefer, according to an announcement from WebMD.

Ann Bilyew, executive vice president for health and president of the Healthcare Solutions Group at WebMD Ignite, told Fierce Healthcare that more traditional methods of outreach, like email, are waning in use, given the number of people who have access to a cellphone over a computer.

For example, she said that many people have multiple email addresses, which can make it difficult to identify which is the best one to use. However, they're far more likely to have just one phone number, which eliminates that potential confusion.

"I do think it's going to help us reach more consistently reach different patient populations," she said. "It might be phone-only or phone-primary, and that may or may not have an email address, and if they do have an email address, they probably have 15 of them." 

"A lot will get lost in the shuffle," Bilyew said.

Bilyew said that deploying the SMS capabilities required the team to adapt to significant regulatory requirements, but they ensured they were in compliance around privacy. In addition, members can opt in or opt out of certain communications.

In a press release, WebMD Ignite notes that the National Institutes of Health found that 99% of text messages are opened by the recipient, and 90% are read. This offers a significant opportunity to reach individuals with WebMD's key hub of educational materials as well as care management information.

The platform allows for custom branding and a seamless integration into the care management team's workflow, as they can track and send texts within Coach. The platform also offers insight into opt-ins and opt-outs and allows teams to manage those requests, too.

The enhanced capabilities within Coach also allow clients to deploy populationwide campaigns that can reach groups of members at scale. For instance, members within a certain care management program can receive key educational materials or reminders about appointments and services.

The tool also allows for geographic targeting, which can alert members about health events local to them.

Teams are able to use Coach to schedule messages and upload member lists to automate the process where possible, streamlining the effort needed for outreach, WebMD Ignite said.

"Our ability to reach consumers and members and patients en masse really is unparalleled, because we can combine the print, plus the email, plus our programmatic, so we're able to reach consumers or members wherever they are," Bilyew said. "We're able to put all of that together to reach very large populations with a singular message, and then measure the impact."

Member engagement and retention is a critical challenge for health insurers, and Bilyew said platforms like Coach can play a key role in improving those interactions. To really address engagement, payers should think more about keeping members connected over the long term, rather than the initial point of contact.

She said, for example, one individual who is shopping online will likely receive recommendations based on the items they viewed. But if those recommendations were surfaced wholesale for another person, it wouldn't provide any real value for their needs.

"What does it mean to give them something of value? It means giving them information they don't they wouldn't otherwise have," Bilyew said. "It means giving them information that they wouldn't otherwise have that is formatted for them, that is super relevant and timely to them, not just random blast emails about this that or other topic."

"It's about what that person will find super relevant and meaningful to them, because it's something that they're they're experiencing, or they have experienced, or they will experience, and they care about it," she said.