Consumer Engagement Depends On Consumer Experience – ONEcare Population Health Academy

By Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer, OPEN MINDS

Executives of every health care organization, from payers to health plans to provider organizations to clinical professionals, are focused on improving consumer engagement. Consumer engagement is defined as the actions consumers take to become better informed and more directly and proactively involved in decisions and behaviors that affect their health.

The reasons are straightforward: consumer engagement improves health outcomes. Less consumer engagement often translates into more inappropriate use of expensive services.

We had a deep dive into real world experiences with consumer engagement programs from Cory Storch, President of Bridgeway Behavioral Health Services in his session, You Can Lead A Horse To Water, But Will They Drink? Innovations In Consumer Engagement. His session was featured in The 2022 OPEN MINDS Care Innovation Summit at The 2022 OPEN MINDS Executive Leadership Retreat.

Bridgeway provides a wide range of services for consumers with serious mental illnesses in New Jersey, including primary physical health and crisis screening, assertive community treatment, supported education and supported employment, homeless outreach and supportive housing, jail diversion, crisis intervention, psychiatric screening living room models, urgent behavioral health care, outpatient counseling, and substance use treatment services. In his discussion of three consumer engagement initiatives at Bridgeway, I had one important takeaway: consumer engagement depends on providing a positive consumer experience. This means improving the convenience and ease of the consumer’s experience with the organization.

Mr. Storch introduced Bridgeway’s consumer engagement initiatives with this framework: consumer education and easy access to care are the predicates to engagement. He relayed how many consumers are hesitant to engage in treatment because their previous experience was unpleasant, sometimes traumatic. And to understand those factors, Bridgeway has been using advisory boards of consumers, caregivers, and law enforcement.

“We had to figure out what it would look like if we had a better system for engagement,” said Mr. Storch. “We have some community engagement boards where we get feedback from people who are like family members, and we have a fair amount of police partnerships, and they participate in these community advisory boards as well. It’s not like these consumers are new to the system. They have a history, and you have to look at how they’ve been treated by the system because that’s going to become really important when thinking about how you engage them.”

“We implemented the living room concept. And some of the feedback that we got from consumers is that when they experienced our living rooms, they said that they were more likely to seek help early on rather than avoid help for the trauma of having the police be the first to confront them in a crisis and being brought to the emergency department. This is a very important consideration for engagement.”

Based on that knowledge, the Bridgeway team has moved ahead with participating in several consumer engagement initiatives. In the first, Bridgeway is part of a statewide health plan-driven integrated system of care initiative for commercial plan members that borrows from the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC) construct. The pilot program uses an app to facilitate virtual integration.

Bridgeway is also testing the use of an app from GoMo Health that personalizes consumer interaction with the organization and its clinicians. They are using the technology for consumers in day programs and supportive housing to connect them and combat loneliness through structured and unstructured texting. The results have been positive in reducing no show rates and increasing revenue per consumers. “We liked how GoMo is in healthcare, and their guiding principles we found to be very relevant to behavioral health,” said Mr. Storch. “We also liked that GoMo really believes in helping people build skills. And that’s an important consideration for Bridgeway because we identify as being a psychiatric rehabilitation service organization.”

Mr. Storch also spoke of their participation in the statewide pilot initiative providing consumers newly released from the state hospitals with a cell phone and peer support. Of the initial 162 consumers participating in the program, only 12 were re-hospitalized in the first year. With those initial results, the State of New Jersey is expanding the pilot to all consumers discharged from state hospitals.

These results have a profound meaning for Mr. Storch. “It feels good for us to be effective as staff, for us to feel like we’re impactful. It’s for that person carrying that little black coal burning with that little ember and hoping somebody fans it for them that night. It’s about connecting to them and reminding them what they’ve learned during the day, reminding them of their strengths and skills and abilities, and reminding them we’re still here for them.”

For more on consumer engagement, check out these resources in The OPEN MINDS Industry Library:

And for more, join us in Las Vegas on November 10 for the session, “Connecting the Dots: How North Carolina is Creating a Statewide Coordinated Network for Whole Person Health.” The session, which is part of The OPEN MINDS Technology & Analytics Institute, features Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson, M.D., MPH State Health Director & Chief Medical Officer for North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.