The Healthcare Engagement Problem: When Every Solution Is Competing for Attention
Employers have spent years building richer benefits ecosystems. Diabetes education, pregnancy support, MSK, behavioral health, fertility, second opinions, care navigation and other programs can all provide tremendous value.
But there is a problem: they are all competing for the same employee's attention.
I've seen this challenge from several sides of healthcare. Early in my career at Cigna, I worked with employers to develop health improvement and engagement strategies for populations of roughly 30,000 employees. Later, at Compass and Included Health, my work moved deeper into healthcare navigation, partnerships and connecting people to appropriate care. I even started my career working with provider contracts.
Today, as I work with organizations on AI and automation, I keep coming back to the same question:
What if the next evolution of healthcare engagement isn't better marketing for individual programs, but better orchestration across all of them?
More Benefits Can Create More Confusion
Consider an employee whose back has been hurting for several weeks.
Their employer may offer an excellent virtual MSK program. But they may also have access to physical therapy, primary care, orthopedics, a health plan navigation service and other resources.
Each may be valuable. Each may also have its own emails, app, website and engagement strategy.
From the employee's perspective, this isn't an ecosystem. It's a list of choices they have to decipher at exactly the moment they're already trying to solve a problem.
And healthcare has an additional complication that traditional consumer marketing doesn't.
Provider contracts, network requirements and other contractual and regulatory considerations can limit the ability to simply steer members toward one provider over another. The specifics vary by arrangement, but healthcare engagement often can't be built around a simple marketing premise:
"We want you to use Provider A."
Instead, the opportunity is to help people understand what options are available, how they differ and what they can do next.
Stop Marketing Programs. Start Recognizing Needs.
Historically, benefits engagement has largely been organized around programs.
The diabetes program markets the diabetes program. The maternity solution promotes maternity services. The MSK vendor drives MSK enrollment.
That makes sense when each solution is viewed independently. It makes less sense when you look at the experience through the employee's eyes.
An employee doesn't wake up wanting to engage with an MSK vendor. Their knee hurts.
They don't wake up wanting to enroll in a maternity point solution. They found out they're pregnant and have questions.
The engagement opportunity starts with the person's need, not the product.
This Is Where AI Gets Interesting
AI creates an opportunity to put an intelligent layer across an increasingly fragmented benefits ecosystem.
Imagine an employee asking:
"My knee has been bothering me for three weeks. What benefits do I have that could help?"
Instead of returning a benefits directory or promoting a single program, an AI-enabled navigation experience could identify the relevant resources available through that employee's benefits.
It could explain the role of virtual MSK, physical therapy, primary care and specialty care. It could help the employee understand eligibility, coverage and potential next steps while operating within the appropriate contractual, privacy and regulatory boundaries.
The AI doesn't necessarily have to say, "Go to this provider."
It can help answer, "Here are the resources available to you, here's what each one does, and here's how to take the next step."
That is a fundamentally different approach to engagement.
The Goal Should Be Fewer, Better Interactions
As I've moved from healthcare engagement and navigation into AI and workflow automation, I've become increasingly convinced that the opportunity isn't to use AI to generate more healthcare communications.
We already have plenty of communication.
The opportunity is to use AI to make those interactions more relevant, better timed and connected across programs.
That also means reconsidering how we measure success. Instead of only asking how many people enrolled in a particular point solution, employers should also be asking whether employees understood their options, found an appropriate resource and successfully took the next step.
Healthcare doesn't need every point solution to become better at competing for attention.
It needs the ecosystem to become better at coordinating attention around the person who needs help.
That may be one of the most valuable roles AI can play in the future of employee benefits.