One of the nation’s top health plans, serving nearly 75 million Americans, recognized the importance of transforming its business to meet the challenges and capture growth opportunities brought on by the continuing shift toward consumer-directed healthcare (CDH).

With the increased commoditization and dilution of employer-based health plans, the company realized it needed a strategy to deepen relationships with participants beyond the health plan. This meant embracing complementary health benefit accounts (HSAs/HRAs/FSAs) as they become increasingly essential to consumers’ healthcare spending and saving decisions. The company knew these financial benefit accounts would quickly become the primary means by which consumers would manage their healthcare finances.

Growing healthcare consumerism coupled with accelerated employee turnover means consumer stickiness lies not within the health plan itself, but instead with CDH accounts. With the average American changing jobs roughly every four years, health plans and providers also change many times during a consumer’s working years and again at retirement. CDH accounts have become the glue that binds the long-term relationship between consumers and health plans. This is because invested dollars are portable from employer-to-employer and can help fund retirement — making them resistant to employment changes and another vehicle for tax-advantaged saving.

These accounts are also the key to increasing consumer engagement during the continued shift toward a CDH model. Plan providers wishing to remain competitive in this changing environment recognize the need for strategic technology partnerships that empower them to deliver a consistently branded and high-value consumer experience throughout the entire healthcare journey.

Providing accurate information the consumer needs when they need it, across every channel, delivers real value to the consumer. Health plans that understand the strategy of delivering value at every consumer interaction in their brand will be positioned to lead the market to consumerism.

Once onboarded with Alegeus as their CDH partner, the company could white label all employer and consumer-facing aspects of its CDH account administration. This enabled the company to deliver a fully integrated, seamless and consumer-centric experience across all channels. The health plan was now able to brand all consumer interactions in their brand — from account debit cards to online and mobile account access and telephone support.

Pairing the Alegeus platform’s engagement capabilities with best practice engagement strategies recommended by Alegeus, the company is well on its way to owning the end-to-end consumer healthcare experience. In turn, they’re unlocking the full value of their CDH account portfolio and securing their market leadership position.

Not all technology solutions are equal in terms of the amount of brand ownership that can be maintained by the health plan. As consumers become increasingly involved in managing their healthcare finances, the ability for them to see one brand and a consistent look and feel across all touchpoints is crucial to their perception of a positive engagement experience.

The benefits of owning this experience for health plans are both tangible and intangible. A positive perception of the health plan as a true partner in the consumer’s healthcare, their evangelism, stickier relationships, improved trust, and higher-than-average account balances are just a few examples. The Alegeus platform supports a number of end-to-end white-label capabilities, so the company is able to project a seamless user experience to consumers.

In addition, the Alegeus platform integrates an ecosystem of capabilities that span the engagement spectrum. The Alegeus engagement hub delivers more than two dozen real-time and proactive and triggered alerts that allows the health plan to engage and empower consumers with meaningful support at critical spending and saving “moments of truth” in their healthcare journey.

Alegeus is also at the forefront of developing innovative tools and resources for health plans to help consumers optimize their healthcare spending and maximize their savings. This includes interactive analytics, proprietary consumer segmentation models, personalized spend/save recommendations, unique savings and incentive programs, transparency tools, leading mobile and interactive tools, and more. By partnering with Alegeus and leveraging a selection of these tools, the health plan is better positioned to differentiate and win in an increasingly consumer-directed healthcare market.

Aside from gaining increased market share among its CDH product offerings, the health plan has benefited from the immediate effects of increased consumer engagement and facilitating a seamless experience for their participants. Recognizing that owning the entire consumer healthcare journey is a simple matter of future survival, the health plan was able to steer its course to capitalize on this tremendous market opportunity facilitated by its new CDH partner, Alegeus.

Through this time of great change in healthcare, there will be leaders and followers. A strategy to own the consumer experience along the entire healthcare journey, enabled by strategic partnerships and technology, will not only help health plans survive the next three to five years, but thrive. This means more profit and security for the company’s business, improved client retention through turbulent times, cost-savings, higher satisfaction for employer groups, and healthier and wealthier consumers.

Proactive health plans, like this one that seized the opportunity for market leadership, will be best positioned for growth in the long term.