Published in Fierce Healthcare
Authored by Rani Aravamudhan, Senior Clinical Consultant, HDMS
Health plans typically design benefit offerings by assessing patterns of utilization and cost data in previous years. Thanks to disruptor-in-chief, COVID-19, this traditional approach was rendered inadequate to say the least.
With the pandemic demanding agility, many health plans turned to flexible data analytics and infrastructures capable of generating original, actionable intelligence at a moment’s notice. Having the ability to respond rapidly to their clients’ immediate data needs, despite ongoing uncertainties, is much like having a fire truck ready to put out fires whenever and wherever they arise.
Health plans needed to quickly pivot business processes to align with evolving customer needs. For healthcare benefits administrator Meritain Health, the large-scale shift in the consumption of care that followed the onset of the pandemic required swift adjustments to accommodate changes in multiple areas: fluctuating sites of service and code sets and payment structures, to name a few. Hence Meritain implemented several strategic variations to their business processes.