Healthcare-Focused Firms Deploy New Technologies and Partnerships

Healthcare-focused firms are deploying new technologies and partnerships to streamline customers’ access to health insurance and prescriptions.

For example, GoHealth, a health insurance marketplace and Medicare-focused digital health company, has transitioned to its new enrollment and engagement solution called Encompass that is designed to enhance the customer experience.

This solution delivers a standardized workflow and a consistent consumer experience, GoHealth CEO Vijay Kotte said in a Wednesday (Nov. 9) earnings release.

“Encompass, our proprietary operating technology and data science platform, allows us to streamline shopping, simplifying the cumbersome and confusing experience of healthcare purchasing, while allowing our agents to focus on what’s most important, showing empathy and care for our Medicare consumers,” Kotte said Wednesday during GoHealth’s quarterly earnings call.

Together with this new solution, GoHealth invested in the testing of marketing strategies, the ongoing development of agents and the introduction of technological enhancements ahead of Medicare’s 2023 Annual Enrollment Period, which began on Oct. 15, according to the earnings release.

These advancements are designed to provide both greater efficiency for the company and an “unparalleled personal consumer experience” to customers, Kotte said in the release. For example, GoHealth’s new PlanFit Tool uses a machine learning algorithm to help the company’s agents quickly select a plan based on the consumer’s individual needs, Kotte said during the call.

Delivering its third-quarter financial results on the same day, GoodRx, a resource for healthcare savings and information, spotlighted its expanded retail pharmacy relationships.

“As a marketplace, we’re not just creating pricing transparency and value for consumers, but also marketing and merchandising opportunities for our retail partners,” GoodRx Interim CEO Scott Wagner said Wednesday during GoodRx’s quarterly earnings call. “We plan to continue strengthening and expanding our relationships, retailer by retailer, over the coming quarters.”

The firm also formed new integrated savings programs (ISPs) with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) MedImpact and Navitus, Wagner said in a Wednesday earnings release.

GoodRx’s ISPs allow shoppers with employer-provided health benefits to present their benefit card when buying a prescription and pay whichever price is lower — the benefit price or the GoodRx price, Wagner said during the call.

These programs allow GoodRx to reach new customers, enable PBMs to gain volume while helping their plan sponsors save money, and deliver lower prices to consumers, Wagner said.

“These are programs that we think every PBM should be doing with us,” Wagner said during the call. “We believe these partnerships are a win-win-win for GoodRx, our PBM partners, and for consumers and the companies that employ them.”