Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Turns to Gamification to Help Consumers Manage Their Healthcare Costs

BRENTWOOD, Tenn., July 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Game mechanics – including points, badges and leader boards – may be a key to controlling rising healthcare costs, say executives leading a recently completed pilot program by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. The state's first healthcare plan has adopted a solution from Change Healthcare^® called Healthcare University™, which uses videos, quizzes, games and game mechanics to make benefits education easy and impactful, to teach consumers how their benefits work and how to make value-based healthcare decisions.

For the pilot, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota implemented Healthcare University for its own employees. The goal was to recruit 20 percent of employees to the platform, however, registration rates exceeded that target by 90 percent, with each user completing an average of eight courses. Course subjects included health insurance basics, benefits selection, billing and ways to save. A user satisfaction survey revealed employees awarded the platform an A- for overall satisfaction.

Based on the successful pilot, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota will introduce the platform to its members during the upcoming open-enrollment period.

"Change Healthcare's unique approach to benefits education has allowed us to maximize engagement with our employees and ensure they are prepared for the coming changes in healthcare," said David Corkum, senior vice president of commercial markets.

Today, fewer than 20 percent of employees understand their health benefits,¹ but they are increasingly responsible for shouldering a greater percentage of health costs. Healthcare University teaches consumers about the price variations that exist in the marketplace and helps drive down costs by demonstrating the advantages of weighing cost, quality and convenience when shopping for care.

Understanding those pricing variations will become more important as consumers move to both public and private exchanges and encounter benefit designs with higher deductibles than they've seen in the past.  "As healthcare reform rolls out, it's more important than ever to provide benefits education to consumers," said Clayton Nicholas, vice president of strategy and marketing at Change Healthcare.  "Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is staying on the forefront in driving increased employee engagement as a way to control those costs."

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Healthcare University pilot case study can be accessed at http://info.changehealthcare.com/EN201307.html.

About Change Healthcare
Change Healthcare Corporation (www.changehealthcare.com) launched in 2007 with a mission to engage consumers in obtaining personalized and actionable cost‐savings information that changes the way they purchase healthcare services. Built on a database of medical, dental and pharmacy claims from a national client base, Change Healthcare delivers substantial savings to health plan members and employers. With an average engagement rate of nearly 60 percent, the Company's web‐ based solution, Transparency Messenger™, is the only tool able to generate and proactively communicate immediate savings opportunities customized to the employee, their plan and local area.

About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (bluecrossmn.com), with headquarters in the St. Paul suburb of Eagan, was chartered in 1933 as Minnesota's first health plan and continues to carry out its charter mission today as a health company: to promote a wider, more economical and timely availability of health services for the people of Minnesota. Blue Cross is a not-for-profit, taxable organization. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, headquartered in Chicago.

¹ "Beyond the Usual Benefits: The Power of Employee Education to Influence Workforce Satisfaction." UNUM. February 15, 2012

SOURCE Change Healthcare Corporation