Hello, everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Payer Issues podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by two special guests. Rona Lee is SCAN Group's chief development officer, and Rob Scruggs is SCAN Group's chief digital officer. Rona, Rob, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me on the podcast today. Well, thanks for having us. Thank you for
having us. Yeah. And before we dive into everything we wanna talk with you both about, Rona, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background in health care, and what it is that you're doing today at SCAN Group? Yeah. Sure. I currently serve as the chief corporate development officer here at SCAN, where I oversee our portfolio of diversified assets, as well as investments, joint ventures, and other partnerships that we might do.
I like to joke that I started my health career when the first episode of Grey's Anatomy came out and ended in my high school chemistry class. But, truthfully, it started when my grandfather was diagnosed with liver cancer, and it made me wonder how I could make an impact in the future to make someone else's family's life a little bit better through either preventative care or early diagnosis
or otherwise. And so that took the shape of Rold and Finance to start and eventually evolved to venture building and investing over time before joining SCAN. Thanks, Rona and Rob. How about you? Thanks, Jacob. Yeah. I serve as the chief digital officer here at
Scan. And I think in simplest terms, I characterize it as I oversee our digital strategy and road map, really driving consumer like experiences that we use to leverage, you know, in leading technologies and enhancing our member journey to streamlining operational efficiencies and driving organizational growth through this channel, really leaning into this channel in new and differentiated ways that we haven't in the past as both a lever for our business as well as for driving
better member experiences and and have about 20, in the channel leading digital transformation efforts across different industries like financial services and retail, consulting and entertainment. Like Rona, my journey was a little personal to arrive at health care with that type of experience. My passion was really trying to apply what I could from a a digital standpoint to helping fix health care. Fantastic. Well, we both we really appreciate you both taking the time to sit down with
us. And I wanted to get started by talking about Scan Group making its tenth investment into the league platform, which, as I understand, is going to help the company and the health plan digitize and personalize member experiences. And that includes the launch of the Scan member portal this coming spring and then followed by a new member app this coming summer.
So, Rob, what were some of the specific member needs or pain points that you have been seeing, are seeing across across your members that you're really hoping to address through this mobile first experience? And how does the League platform help to meet those
goals? Yeah. Thanks, Jacob. I I look. I'd start with you know, Scan has partnered with League to help us take, at a high level, a more connected ecosystem approach in delivering against our digital engagement strategy and moving to a more consumer like experience. And with respect to solving for those member pain points, I'd say there's three key areas of focus for us, personalization, access, and self-service.
So, you know, it's our intent to drive a much more personalized member experience, also provide easier access to critical care information and relative educational content, and also really amplifying, more easy to use self-service features that help manage a member's care journey. Ultimately, though, we're looking to drive better outcomes with an experience that improves member satisfaction with, you know, through this channel that better supports members throughout their care journey.
It improves in member education around health conditions and overall benefits usage. It should make it easier for members to access the services and support that they so critically need from SCAN with things like easier navigation, more intuitive, content, and more meaningful benefits explanations, and, you know, and we also provide content in multiple languages.
So we're we're trying to make it easier for members to engage and stay connected throughout this process, throughout their their their journey, their health care journey. And, also, we provide opportunities for them to connect, more seamlessly with our member service teams. You know, this is an omnichannel experience, and so we wanna make it easy on the member when they may have a higher touch support need.
Our objective is really to drive a better experience that connects these touch points more seamlessly across the omni omnichannel health experience because it is omnichannel, and provides a more holistic view into the member's overall health journey, but focus squarely on that support and access for them. Absolutely. And then, Rob, you mentioned this is all about making and improving,
members' health outcomes. So can you expand a bit on some of the key features of the new scan member app and and how they are going to be aiming to improve those outcomes for your members, particularly when it comes to what you mentioned with better health engagement and managing their benefits. Sure. Sure. And we've really taken the time to shape the experience around the most frequently used tasks and behaviors that we see from members to ensure that we're
solving for those top use cases. And so both the, you know, the portal and the app have been designed to drive stickiness and pull folks into that ecosystem and drive more engagement with the member through things like health journeys and the health journeys experience that we're launching, which is an orchestrated series of next best actions, including scans health risk assessment that users can,
leverage to shape their specific health journey. For example, you know, here, a health journey is a series of data driven, you know, data driven preventative actions that SCAN determines for each member based on the data we have for them, which is an you know, an experience presents in a more engaging way based on that data and how we're using that to translate, you know, an experience more personalized for them and the goal being to to to drive an experience in a more personalized way that
meets the most important needs for that particular member to help close those identified care gaps. And, you know, we're using data to motivate users in a way that's relevant to them, focusing on what's meaningful or important to them in their particular health journey, like tying health outcomes to leading a more active lifestyle with friends and family.
I think understanding your benefits is also key to driving more successful outcomes, and we're providing easier access to navigate a member's benefits with a more simplified view of cost and coverage details. We've added key self-service features that include easier access to ID card management and access to key documents anywhere like EOB statements and
bills. We also offer, you know, prescription management where members can more easily track their prescriptions and medication adherence status. We're also looking at, you know, providing a health dashboard where members can capture key key health metrics around personal health data for things like blood pressure or BMI or other health attributes and track those in a consolidated view, consolidated dashboard.
We also have, you know, what we're calling a get care feature, which enables members to access and interact directly with their care and support teams to better understand and give them confidence in what their care options are. Wow. So it sounds like based off everything you just said, Rob, this is going to be a very transformative offering Rona Skin has made several strategic investments in innovative tech companies in the last few years.
So how does this partnership with League specifically fit into the company's broader vision for using tech to improve health care for for your members? Yeah. That's a great question. I think SCAN's partnership with League really is rooted in our commitment to listening to our members and adapting to their evolving preferences. I mean, we've been doing that since our inception. We are proud of having translated these tailored patient
needs into population specific health plans. We launched the industry's first semi product for women and the LGBTQ plus population. We've also had a fantastic cohort of seniors in the community join us as peer advocates to support their peers navigating the MA and aging journey along the way.
And this partnership with League is just a reflection of how we believe that, you know, keeping the member at the center of the mission is critical to everything that we do every day, and this is just enabling us to do it in a more digital first and personalized way.
I mean, I'm sure these statistics aren't new to people, but smartphone adoption among older adults have doubled in the past ten years, and 66% of older adults are using technology in all different sorts of ways to simplify their daily life. This is very different from the MA population
a decade ago. And so being able to work with the league are allowing is allowing us to meet seniors where they are by delivering a mobile first and personalized healthcare experience that they're expecting from healthcare payers today. And at the same time, this allows us to remain more focused on the human touch and empowering our teams at every touch point with these seniors to build more meaningful connections to support their health and independence.
And such a good point that you just mentioned there, Rona, that digital engagement amongst seniors has really grown exponentially over the last decade. I think the natural follow-up question there is, how do you see the role of the portal and the app then evolving over the next few years? So that was a big question. Rob,
I'm sure you have thoughts too. And we're we're used to not being able to read perfectly into a crystal ball, but, I think that the the the only thing constant in health care and consumer preferences is change.
I think that the more that we can get to an n of one to understand what people need and, you know, what exactly their health care needs are, how they want us to engage with them, how do we empower our agents and people with the next best action to actually preempt what consumers actually may need in this situation. Those are all things that we can we see very applicable ways this to evolve in the next few years. Yeah. And I I'll I'll just
echo that and and build that. Look. There there's no question that we are dealing with the incredibly engaged digitally engaged audience. I mean, when you think about the the generation that created the Internet is now our audience. Right? So I I would say at SCAN, we are always looking at what's next in terms of innovation. We've gotta get the basics right, but we're also looking around the corner and making sure that we're prepared, you know, for for what they need from us in
this channel when they need it. And we're considering several impactful enhancements and upcoming releases, things like, you know, caregiver access and, you know, a caregiver tailored experience specific to those caregivers, or, you know, for our members, continuing to enhance those self-service capabilities and, you know, even some of the basics around better ID card management, replacement of cards, and digital IDs, you know, online, the ability to submit, you know, com
claims more easily online and change providers or plans more easily online. I could see more experiences around gamification and rewards, incentivizing members to complete health care actions to drive those outcomes that we both wanna see through rewards and gamification experiences,
additional supplemental benefits integration. When you think of a more seamless integrated experience around things like dental and transportation and other types of supplemental benefits to give folks easier access to those. And, of course, we have to talk about
AI. Right? And and think about benefits AI or an AI enabled service that simplifies complex benefits and really breaks down that information to enable members to find answers quickly and more easily and complete tasks faster, or an AI driven care finder to better guide folks through you know, in determining the right providers at and facilities at the moment of need and the ability to schedule with
those providers more easily. And lastly, I'd probably say I I could see a role for immersive experiences as you think about the continued sort of evolution and innovation with, you know, payers and providers leveraging virtual or augmented reality to deliver services or capabilities in a way that drives more interactive experiences with members at the point of need and on demand. Absolutely. Well, clearly, a lot of exciting things
on the horizon from these offerings. So hope you will keep us updated as as these products continue to evolve. But before we go, Rona, we've got a lot of health plan leaders listening in from all over the country. Any final thoughts or final bits of advice you wanna offer them?
There's so many things, but I think oftentimes in as complicated of an industry as health care, it's it's very easy to lose sight of what we're what how what got us into the industry to begin with, you know, and between Rob and I with personal experiences that landed us here, I'm sure that resonates with
a lot of people listening in. And so I think this sounds so simple, but we need to just stop thinking of pace patients as a statistic or a data point as a case and start seeing them as people with unique needs and expectations. That's how you really understand and can be in their shoes of how do they actually want to engage with you and what you're trying to help them with.
I think as Rob has probably seen in financial services and hospitality and transportation, etcetera, and myself with other industries, other industries have set the bar for what people are expecting from us in terms of convenience and delight. Technology can help us get there in closing the gap, but it's not the whole answer.
So I hope, everyone sees technology and the speed of innovation as just a tool in our toolkit to empower collaboration between stakeholders, particularly between pairs and providers at this point, to really amplify the human touch and not replace it. Fantastic. And, Rob, how about you? Your concluding thoughts for us? I would just echo, you know, Rona said it very well, and I just say it's gonna be a a
a balance of finding the right balance. This is for the you know, in our lifetime, gonna always be an omnichannel high touch experience. And, you know, being the digital person, I will never say there digital is always the answer. And so I think there is a a thoughtful means and way to incorporate it into that end to end health journey that, you know, complete holistic experience in a way that's thoughtful and meaningful
and complements the experience. And so I think as long as we look at it from that point of view and use it as a service, you know, to an end for the member and their benefit, that, you know, that's gonna be the successful path forward and drive the outcomes we wanna see. Wonderful. Well, Rona, Rob, thank you both so much for taking the time to sit down with us and for sharing your insights with our listeners. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Jacob. For having us.
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