Blue Cross – Blue Shield of Georgia Partner With SoloHealth
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBSGa), the state’s largest insurer, and SoloHealth, Atlanta, have announced a strategic partnership whereby the insurer will leverage SoloHealth’s state-wide network of health and wellness consumer kiosks for personalized member engagement services and highly targeted new member acquisition programs
Beginning Aug. 1, 2013, BCBSGa’s more than 2.4 million members will have access to the bilingual kiosks, called SoloHealth Stations, located in more than 125 select Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in Georgia. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The SoloHealth Station, an FDA-cleared, HIPAA compliant and patented technology, provides consumers with a digital, self-service healthcare platform that includes free health and wellness services, biometric screenings, health risk assessments and information. SoloHealth Stations are currently in more than 3,000 retail locations nationwide, including select Walmart, Safeway, Sam’s Club, Schnuck’s Markets, Vons, Tom Thumb and Randalls stores. SoloHealth executives expect to scale to 5,500 locations by early 2014.
“Technology and innovation is allowing consumers to empower themselves and take control of their own health like never before,” says Bart Foster, CEO and founder of SoloHealth. “Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia is pioneering in this space, leveraging our convenient health and wellness platform to give members valuable, self-service tools and services. They are also getting ahead of our new healthcare marketplace by connecting and engaging with potential new members through the kiosk’s highly personalized and targeted consumer platform.”
“These HIPAA-compliant, bilingual kiosks will provide important health information to users and gives us one more way that we can connect with the consumer,” says Morgan Kendrick, president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia Inc. “This is a nice intersection for us to connect to our consumers where they shop and in some cases where they work. We will deploy 50 of these kiosks at the sites of some of our large-employer clients over the next year. As this relationship with SoloHealth progresses, we see deeper connectivity that has broader market impact and broader clinical impact for our organization and members.”
The new alliance allows BCBSGa to offer their members a self-service health and wellness platform that allows for education, information, health tracking, risks assessments, and data capture in convenient retail locations.
Member engagement services include the ability to:
- Create a customized engaging member experience, allowing for personalized and valuable information and services for members;
- Allow members to track and trend their health data; merge member’s updated SoloHealth biometric data and HRA results to leverage and expand existing BCBSGa care management systems;
- Expand the BCBSGa retail presence with SoloHealth’s 125+ retail locations;
- Increase brand awareness and build equity with members across Georgia;
- Place additional Stations at customer’s work place to give local functionality for home office workers.
Additionally, BCBSGa will leverage the kiosks to generate permission-based, qualified leads from consumers seeking information on either Medicare Advantage or individual exchange-based plans.
New member acquisition benefits include the ability to:
- Increase brand awareness and build equity with consumers across Georgia;
- Generate highly targeted, permission-based contact information on people seeking to learn about the right health care product allowing BCBSGa to acquire new members efficiently;
- Expand BCBSGa brand awareness throughout SoloHealth’s 125+ retail locations.
The SoloHealth Station offers highly personalized and contextually relevant experiences for each user, allowing for the ability to customize content to focus on specific behaviors or groups, to drive engagement, leads or to manage benefits. BCBSGa members will identify themselves through their member ID and then enter into a unique, BCBSGa-branded experience. Non-members can be served targeted questions about healthcare and insurance allowing SoloHealth to generate permission-based and qualified leads for BCBSGa.
Although financial terms and details were not disclosed, pricing will be calculated on a per member per month basis for member engagement services and cost per lead for member acquisitions. BCBSGa will also be using a number of new SoloHealth Stations with employers across the state.
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