Health engagement is more than consistently sending messages to members. It’s more than checking a box by reaching out a certain number of times per month, and it’s more than a member picking up their phone and saying they’ll do something for their health. Frequent messages, even if they connect, don’t equal improved health outcomes.
The gap between engagement and getting a member to do something is critical, and it’s where having someone help navigate any unmet needs becomes essential.
That’s where a community-based care approach comes in. By combining advanced technology and proprietary data models and pairing them with meaningful human connections led by empathy, Reema’s community-based Guides engage hard-to-reach members, talk to them on their terms, and motivate them in ways that work. All to create a more balanced approach to better care.
Reema believes that AI-powered humans can create real change. Here are three ways we’ve seen technology support empathetic engagement and positively impact health outcomes.
1: Technology identifies individual member needs.
We know this much to be true: a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Every member is unique, with individual healthcare needs and barriers to overcome. Technology can help us identify which gaps exist for individual members, and Community Guides can help members navigate through the next step. Whether it’s arranging a ride to get to their appointment, helping them make a phone call or identifying barriers in their way, Guides have the resources to overcome whatever challenge the member is facing.
Technology enables care teams to blend the authentic with the automated to be both human and scalable.”
This doesn’t just apply to how we address member needs. After all, personalized healthcare must go beyond the care received. It’s about meeting members where they are with the right message, at the right time, using the right communication method. Technology enables care teams to blend the authentic with the automated to be both human and scalable.
Addressing Individual Member Needs with the Reema App
Reema’s tech bolsters Community Guide activities by making real-time scheduling decisions and suggesting next steps based on member preferences, clinical and social needs, and what’s worked well in the past. And, even before suggesting the next best interaction, we’re able to optimize the initial outreach process using personas to determine the best way to reach out for the highest chance of connecting when engaging with new members. Once we have engaged a member, our Resourcing Hub can facilitate relationships with our community partners to help meet social and medical needs more efficiently.
2: Technology supports health interventions and interactions.
Similar to supporting a personalized engagement approach, leveraging technology that is smart enough to translate member information into actionable insights leads to better health outcomes. When Community Guides deploy the insights from our data models (housed in a safe, secure environment), they are able to determine a member’s next best action.
Technology can inform the depth and balance of intervention each member needs, allowing Community Guides to determine how much support an individual requires. Some members will need more support to navigate their situation and others will need less.
Knowing the individual need helps Guides to build connections on a personal level, moving the clinical need aside to ensure they are building an effective relationship with the member built on trust. While ultimately the goal is to address the clinical need and improve health outcomes, relationship building is a critical first step that can’t be overlooked. Utilizing our in-house data model helps Community Guides make quick, informed decisions about where to go next.
By balancing the engagement recommended by predictive models with the expertise of Community Guides, we can achieve more successful interventions and make more meaningful connections with the members that need them the most.
Health Intervention Assistance Using the Reema App
One of the ways Reema supports quick health interventions is through our Member Need Detection and Notification feature. The app can detect when a member is experiencing a need that a Guide hasn’t yet reported. This is based on interaction patterns and natural language processing (NLP) of free form notes taken after each engagement. Our technology never sleeps, so we’re able to stay up-to-date on all member activity, including hospital admissions or any overnight communication from members.
We’re acutely aware that health care and social needs are complicated, and no single Community Guide can be an expert in all things. As a result, we designed the app to walk Guides through how to address different health concerns and social situations, giving the Guide and the member the autonomy to navigate the situation without the direct intervention of an outside expert.
3: Technology offers a personalized, low-barrier engagement approach.
For members who are harder to reach, communicating at the right time using the right channel could be the difference between a member getting the care they need at a critical moment or an emergency situation. This is why meeting members where they are is so important and why leveraging digital communication methods, like text messaging, has proven to boost member engagement rates, leading to improved outcomes.
We’ve found that texting is a great and effective way to communicate with members and is often the preferred communication method for many in the population we serve. Using their preferred way to communicate builds trust. This, in turn, builds the kind of relationship that leads to a higher likelihood of continued communication, particularly for members who may not have been previously engaged.
Improving Member Engagement with the Reema App
As we’ve mentioned, member engagement is the first step to bridging critical care gaps. Reema’s technology detects engagement trends over time, measuring the quality of engagement, helping Guides go deeper. Monitoring engagement trends allows Guides to focus less on busy work, tracking, and documentation, and more on building a strong relationship with their members.
As technology continues to evolve and data models advance, Reema will be better positioned to reach more members and address any unmet social needs they need help navigating. For more information on how to get started with Reema, connect with us at reema@reemahealth.com.
