In June, we announced the launch of Health Cloud for Payers, a complete solution built on the #1 CRM platform that’s designed to meet the specific needs of insurance carriers and health plan sponsors. In preparation for Dreamforce ‘18, where we’ll showcase live demos on stage for the first time, I sat down with Rita Sharma, VP of Product Management, to get her insights on why we created this solution and how it can help solve the big challenges that health insurers are facing.

Q. Let’s start at the beginning. When designing the Health Cloud for Payers product, you started by asking payers what their biggest challenges are. What did they say?

Our payer customers stressed a few key challenges. First, disruption is happening in the market, and they are concerned. Payers know they have to improve both member experience and efficiency to continue to be a player in the industry.

The second thing we heard was that payers do not have a complete view of their members at any given time. This is because they’re operating on disjointed legacy systems that have been strung together over the years.

Finally, we heard over and over again about the importance of earning and building trust with members. Payers notoriously do not have the best Net Promoter Score (NPS) scores. Members oftentimes feel like the experiences they have are disjointed, not personalized enough, and sometimes even hostile. Payers want to change this. They want members to trust them — and view them as a trusted resource — as part of their overall healthcare team.

Q. You also asked payers what solutions they wanted most. What were they?

Payers are begging for interoperability. They were telling us, “Give me systems that work together seamlessly, so I can extract the data. I need a unified, 360-degree view of my members. Help me collaborate with my providers, so they can provide the kind of care that our members need to drive better outcomes. And give me the intelligence to automate and pull insights out of the massive datasets that I have.”  

Q. Your team collected all of these insights in order to develop Health Cloud for Payers. What does it do?

We created exactly what our payer customers asked for. We started by building member profiles with a complete 360-degree view, so insurers can understand the member journey from enrollment to service and care management. This helps ensure that members have a personalized experience whenever they need help.

We also added intelligent care management for personalized and proactive interventions, along with guided workflows, utilization management, and customized care plans to empower care coordinators to be more effective and efficient at all times.  Lastly, we gave payers the ability to provide connected, collaborative experiences for the entire care team. Now physicians, specialists, and other caregivers can work together to support members on any channel and on any device.

Q. When you show payers the product for the first time, what’s the initial reaction?

Excitement. Not only because of the specific features — the complete member view, intelligent care management, and the collaborative experiences — but also because we’ve built this on the world’s #1 CRM. Unlike the hard-coded applications they use today, the Salesforce solution provides a 360-degree view of their members on a platform that is completely customizable and responsive to their needs. They’re eager to see how — with Einstein and the power of AI — they can give their members the highly personalized experiences they expect.

Q. What would you say to healthcare payers who want to build a member-centric, connected organization but are also balancing other priorities?

I’ve talked to a lot of healthcare payer organizations — over 30 since the Health Cloud for Payers launch announcement last April — and now that we have this out-of-the-box solution that can help them start their journey, they’re feeling a renewed sense of urgency to become member-centric, member-trusted organizations. At the end of the day, organizations with this kind of focus see better member outcomes and overall financial ROI. Our customers are prioritizing those efforts.

Q. Dreamforce is just around the corner. Do you have any can’t-miss recommendations for those joining us on September 25-28?

There are so many amazing things happening, including more than 40 healthcare and life sciences sessions. I recommend that everyone take a look at our Healthcare and Life Sciences Trail Map to explore everything we’ve got planned. However, if I had to highlight only a few things not to miss, they would be:

1) Healthcare and Life Sciences Keynote on Thursday, September 27 at 12:30 p.m. Here, you’ll see a live demo of the new product and hear from two other customers about how they are using Health Cloud.

2) Health Cloud Roadmap on Tuesday, September 25 at 10:30 a.m. Here, you’ll see not only what makes up Health Cloud today but also a sneak peak into what we’re thinking about doing with the product in the future.

3) Visit the Campground and Lodge to get all of your questions answered.  

If you’d like to learn more about our Health Cloud for Payers solution, check out the product datasheet and watch our webinar, “Healthcare Payers: Scale Member Care Management with CRM” to hear how CDPHP is transforming member services to improve outcomes, lower costs, and earn member trust.