The COVID-19 crisis is allowing us to see what is possible for the future of healthcare.
Over the past few weeks virtual visits have skyrocketed for Premera members, a nearly 10-fold increase between February and March. We anticipate that trend to continue. Much of that new demand has been met by Washington and Alaska providers who stood up virtual care capacity almost overnight – with thousands of providers jumping into a brand-new virtual environment they hadn’t practiced in before.
Primary care apps, like Doctor On Demand and 98point6 and behavioral health apps, like Talkspace, Boulder Care and Workit Health, have seen their own surge in demand. Premera has partnered with these start-ups to increase access to care options at no additional cost for all of our 2.3 million members across the country.
Suddenly, you can access virtual appointments for a wide variety of care needs. This is an unprecedented and dramatic shift brought about by the COVID-19 crisis and not likely to fade even as we plot our path to a new normal.
It seems like we have leapt 10 years in just 8 weeks’ time with necessity once again proving to be the mother of invention. But this is an opportunity to consider an even greater paradigm shift.
A better healthcare ecosystem puts the customer at the center and infuses innovation with our humanity. That’s something we’re putting into practice at Premera Blue Cross, and we call it three-dimensional innovation:
Empathy + Trust + Purpose = Three-Dimensional Innovation
Here’s what that means to us.
Empathy
During this pandemic, we’ve seen the critical importance of empathy as leaders have weighed the human cost of this pandemic against the severe disruption it has brought to every sector of our economy and to our society, in general. We have seen the incredible response of some true heroes in our communities – healthcare providers on the front lines putting their wellbeing, and that of their families, on the line to care for COVID-19 patients.
Premera has a new, firsthand experience for what this is like, having opened our first primary care clinic in Spokane just weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in Washington state. This crisis is forcing the entire healthcare system to innovate and compelling us to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers like never before.
Trust
By necessity, this moment is driving a heightened level of interdependency within our healthcare ecosystem and beyond. We collectively share mutual accountability for a response to this crisis that is pushing old conventions by the wayside.
Deepening partnerships across the health ecosystem, particularly those between payers and providers, have the potential to rewrite the healthcare experience for patients. As the pandemic is teaching us, we are all in this together. Learning to work together in new ways and constructing a future built on trust and shared accountability for better health is a key opportunity in the months and years ahead.
Purpose
There are both large and small decisions we face daily as we determine how to bridge the gap for our customers – connecting the insights on their needs with a healthcare world that is under intense pressure. But this pressure-filled moment is a constructive one. It is a moment for Premera to challenge itself to live up to its purpose: “Improving customers’ lives by making healthcare work better.” It is a moment for all of us to appeal to our own internal purpose, that which brings us to our field of work each day.
Finding common purpose centers us on what really matters, while helping dismantle old conventions built around institutional interests instead of what people actually need.
This crisis has validated that tech intensity can support a radically different experience for consumers. It has also shown us that we can move mountains overnight when we are collectively motivated to do so.
So, now what?
Let’s seize this moment, create a new paradigm, and move toward a world of ‘big humanity’ that is informed by ‘big data.’ Now is the time for us to come together – connected by empathy, trust and purpose – and co-innovate toward the solutions that will make healthcare work better.
