After a flurry of earnings calls from health insurers, Forrester released a few observations. The analysts noted a growing pressure for healthcare professionals to “up their game” in customer experience.

Forcing this trend is the entry of retail giants like Amazon, CVS, and Walgreens in the space — as well as the consumer expectation that healthcare should mirror the retail experience.

But there’s work to do. Health organizations lag in terms of creating seamless digital experiences. What’s holding them back? In most cases, the root cause is data, including the absence of a single patient view.

Identity Resolution Provides a Solution

Just like in retail, healthcare consumers expect to feel understood. They want caregivers, payers, and other stakeholders to know them as the same person.

That’s why many healthcare organizations are interested in identity resolution, or the ability to recognize a patient or member as the same unique person.

A crucial part of identity resolution is “knowing all that is knowable” about your patient or member. This includes personal information and medical history, including chronic conditions, prescriptions, medication adherence, care gaps, and more. And it applies whether online, offline, inbound, or outbound.

The Impact of Holistic Healthcare

Think of holistic healthcare as an ongoing conversation between a consumer and everyone vested in their care — including primary providers, specialists, payers, pharmacists, and more.

That conversation can be challenging—and at times even risky—when a stakeholder lacks a complete patient view. For example, providers have exceptional analytics for diagnostics and treatments. Yet outside of the clinical setting, most providers know little about their patients. It’s not because they don’t care. The issue is that they lack the behavioral, preference, and consumer data they need for a holistic approach.

With identity resolution, stakeholders have all the information they need in one place, helping them make recommendations across channels based on a single view of the patient.

How It Works: Creating an Identity Graph

From a technology standpoint, providers and healthcare systems may have multiple electronic medical records (EMR) systems that are siloed by care units, networks, or hospitals.

Furthermore, most health systems use marketing platforms that are not HIPAA-compliant — meaning the tools can only aggregate personal, non-PHI data and cannot incorporate health information to help personalize the experience.

That’s where a customer data platform (CDP) can transform your approach.

Not every CDP is created equal. We recommend rgOne from RedPoint Global, which can help you create an “identity graph” with complete contact history, all attributes, and all aggregations.

Channel preferences, social determinants of health, and risk tolerance are among the signals included in a persistently updated golden record that, once activated, yields personalized experiences on any channel, at any time.

Use Case: Personalized Communication

Leveraging a CDP with an identity graph, you can run advanced segmentation rules for more efficient and personalized campaigns.

For example, consider a provider who wants to close a care gap for colorectal cancer screenings. They start by aggregating an audience of men and women turning 50.

From there, they can improve outcomes considerably with a complete identity view. For example, matching the recipient to a specific provider, recommending optimal screening times, offering transportation options to someone who doesn’t drive, or providing payment arrangement information to a low-income member.

Use Case: Omnichannel Orchestration and Next-Best Action

With an identity graph, communication with a patient or member stems from an entirety of signals and behaviors. And real-time engagement is enabled across all channels as the healthcare consumer traverses them.

Crucially, triggered events can be on an inbound or outbound dynamic. For example, perhaps a member received an outbound call to schedule an appointment but decides to schedule online instead. With a single customer view, a payer or provider recognizes the individual—even without logging into a member portal—and can personalize the online content, making it hyper-relevant for the next steps of their healthcare journey.

Use Case: Value-Based Care (VBC)

With VBC, an insurer may contract with a provider for a smaller financial reimbursement if the member stays healthy. Actions may require preventative screenings, taking prescribed medications as directed, following a nutrition plan, and more. To track these milestones, it’s critical to maintain a consistent dialogue and view of the patient across channels.

Identity resolution helps you orient a seamless experience around a single view of that individual healthcare consumer. You can see a direct revenue link between hyper-personalized content and improved health outcomes.

Know All There is to Know

The future of healthcare requires that you truly know your customer.

As Forrester points out, “The elevated consumer demand for ease, immediacy, control of data, transparency, and insights…will encourage payers and providers to arm consumers with the tools, insights, and recommendations that enable more prescriptive and preemptive care.”

Identity resolution is a transformative way to improve personalization and health outcomes. Curious about how to start? We’d love to answer your questions.