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Prioritize customer experience
Managing creativity while following regulatory rules can be challenging. You may need to focus on optional pieces and content packaging. For government-sponsored plans, you may need to include specific standardized pieces to meet regulatory requirements.
Unlike Medicare, which is federal, Medicaid is a jointly funded federal and state program. State departments of health or equivalent agencies must pre-approve every piece of a welcome kit. To avoid costly delays, build a review cycle into your production timeline.
Consider the overall message you want to convey to new members and how they will receive it. What’s the most important information they need to know? What do you want them to feel when they receive it? How can you meet them wherever they are on their healthcare journey?
A consumer focus group is a great way to learn what interests members. It also shows what messages resonate with your target audience. Remember, consumer populations include a range of individual goals, interests, and lifestyles. You may want to consider creating personas to represent different demographics within your member population and developing materials with these distinct personalities in mind.
The importance of persona
Personas help you stop seeing your audience as one group. They help you see them as people with needs. Hone in on how your marketing materials might suit these needs with the following questions when creating personas:
- Who is this person? What is their age, occupation, and educational background? What type of home do they live in? Are they single, married, or in a relationship? Do they have children, and if so, what ages? The more specific you can be in creating unique and detailed personas, the more meaningful they become.
- What are each persona’s goals in interacting with their health plan? What do they hope to accomplish in the short term and in the long term? A retired person living with a chronic health condition will read health plan materials differently. A recent college graduate new to their own policy will read them differently too.
- What is their comfort level with technology? Is this someone who does their banking through their mobile device? Or is this someone who writes out and mails a physical check to pay their mortgage each month? These details can be very useful for planning a distribution strategy. They can also help open channels for member engagement in welcome kits.
Give each persona a name. Maybe you can even assign a stock photo image, so you can picture them in their daily life.
Being able to picture how “Marcus,” “Margaret,” or “Max” might feel about their welcome kit can help a lot. It is a strong exercise when you create your materials. It can also help to use demographic data you already have about your members, like age or job status.
This can guide you when choosing what personas might represent different member groups.
Instead of creating materials that resonate with every persona, consider and represent each persona. By using personas, you can diversify your marketing materials and provide more personalized marketing materials that speak to individual interests.
Medicaid cultural competency considerations
- Language assistance: Federal law requires language assistance notices for the top 15 languages spoken in the state. Your welcome kit should include these notices prominently, indicating full translations are available upon request.
- Accessibility: Provide materials for people with disabilities in alternative formats, including large print, braille, and audio.
- Reading level: To ensure literacy for all enrollees, use plain language. Check it for easy understanding during editorial review. Medicaid communications should target a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level.
Consider omnichannel distribution
Health insurers usually send welcome kits as printed packets. You may receive them by mail or at a work orientation. Today, many digital communication channels are also available. The trick is to find the right balance between digital communications and traditional print to reach your members well.
People widely use email, SMS texts, and mobile app alerts. But not everyone feels comfortable or confident using them.
Meanwhile, some members don’t want mailers and brochures, and they much prefer a paperless approach. Others may prefer a mix of delivery options.
They may get some materials by mail. Others may arrive by email.
Medicaid members may face high “churn” rates. This means they often change addresses, phone numbers, and living situations due to instability. Offering digital delivery ensures vital coverage information reaches your members, even when mailing addresses change.
Health insurers should consider leveraging different distribution channels to suit distinct member preferences. Modern platforms now let you track how members prefer to get messages and updates from their healthcare plans. These solutions enable marketers to vary their preferred distribution channels seamlessly, without duplicating messaging or materials.
This is important because duplicate messages can happen. A member may get the same message by text, email, and mail. Over time, they may start to ignore these messages.
Messaging management systems today are sophisticated enough to handle various levels of omnichannel distribution even on an individual level. Depending on your members’ preferences, you may send some information by mail. You can share more details through email campaigns, your website, or a secure online member portal. You can also use other distribution channels.
Organize Information intuitively
Most new member welcome kits include similar materials, with changes based on members’ needs and personas. They usually give an overview of how the health plan works. It covers basic coverage, deductibles, and cost sharing. It also explains how to use the plan.
Welcome kits may also include promotions for health and wellness programs, value-added discounts, and other perks. It is easy to give too much detail and overwhelm new members. That is why health insurers should be mindful when they create welcome kits.
Health plans must follow compliance rules and determine which inserts they require and allow with member materials. Depending on the plan type, the plan may prohibit certain combinations of inserts.
Requirements can vary based on program type and state regulations. Medicare plans may need to give members required information. This includes Evidence of Coverage (EOC) documents, provider directories, formulary details, and member rights notices.
Medicaid managed care organizations must present enrollee information in a clear, easy-to-understand way. It must be easy to access and available in required languages and formats. Working closely with compliance teams during development helps welcome kits meet rules and support a positive member experience.
Include your internal compliance team as reviewers, to ensure welcome kit materials satisfy industry guidelines. It’s crucial to work with a marketing team that understands these parameters and offers a creative design approach.
For Medicaid compliance, welcome kits should explicitly address the following:
- Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT): Give clear, simple steps for members to book free rides to medical appointments. Many Medicaid members rely on this benefit or may not be aware they have access to it.
- Community resource referrals: Go beyond traditional health coverage. Connect members with housing support, food security programs (like SNAP), and utility assistance. This helps support whole-person health.
Organize information in a way that makes sense and is intuitive to the member. Start with an introduction and overview. Explain what the welcome kit includes. Share how members should use it.
Save extraneous details for more in-depth sections and make sure they are easy for members to find. Even print pieces should be easy to navigate. Members can quickly find what they need without reading every word.
Be respectful of your member’s time and attention. Include a table of contents. Embed hyperlinks in digital pieces.
Use clear headings and subheadings. Highlight the most important information in text boxes or with other visual cues. Introduce terms that most readers may not know. Do it briefly and with a respectful tone. Keep the text flowing without awkward pauses.
Keep in mind that a welcome kit is an introduction. While it’s good to be comprehensive, a welcome kit doesn’t need to be a complete reference. You can guide members to more resources, like your member website or provider directory. These may help people who want more information than the welcome kit includes.
For Medicaid members, welcome kits can be an important onboarding tool. They can highlight transportation benefits, care management resources, community support services, and health risk assessments. Making these resources easy to find early can boost service use. It also helps members get plan support.
For Medicaid, most states require plans to complete the New Enrollee Health Risk Assessment (HRA). They must do this within 30 to 90 days of enrollment.
The welcome kit is your main tool for prompting this key first step. Make the HRA request prominent. Explain why it matters to the member’s care. Provide multiple easy ways to complete it, such as phone, online portal or mail. Identifying high-risk members early will enable care management outreach that can dramatically improve health outcomes while reducing costs.
Set the tone
People often think of health insurance companies as being stiff and bureaucratic. A friendly, conversational tone can go a long way in conveying warmth and helpfulness. Health plan marketers shouldn’t overwhelm members with more information than they need or clutter the material with industry jargon. Put yourself in their shoes by anticipating questions and clarifying terms that may be unfamiliar to them.
Content should be written similarly to how people speak to one another in casual conversations. Keep sentences short and straightforward. Use contractions. Employ transitional words and phrases frequently. Opt for shorter words, like “use” instead of “utilize,” for example.
While a warm, conversational tone is preferred, Medicaid plans are legally required to include specific “Member Rights and Responsibilities” and Grievance and Appeals language that must not be altered. Check with your compliance team to isolate this required language into clearly designated sections, so it won’t disrupt the tone of the rest of your kit.
Be intentional with conveying sentences positively. You may be required to use specific language when discussing certain concepts in government-sponsored plans. Look for opportunities to relay the advantages of a plan’s policies or to offer tips on how members can get the most value from their plans. Even small nuances can help set an overall positive tone, which is essential in crafting constructive communications and creating a meaningful relationship with a new member.
Health plans have a lot of ground to cover with new member welcome kits, including:
- Offering an overview of the benefits details
- Educating members about providers in the network
- Helping members understand pharmacy benefits
- Informing members about health programs available
That means a lot of opportunities to leverage clear and supportive language to help build trust with your new members. Every point of engagement with members is an opportunity to build trust, and new member welcome kits are a great start.
Members who are actively engaged in their healthcare may be more likely to stay on top of preventive care and recommended screenings. This type of strong customer engagement can translate to better health outcomes and lower costs of care – a win for both the consumer and the health insurance company.
As CMS regulations and state Medicaid requirements continue to evolve, health plans should regularly review welcome kit content to confirm it aligns with current accessibility, language, and member communication standards. Compliance and customer experience are not competing priorities. The most effective welcome kits are those that successfully balance regulatory requirements with clear, relevant, and engaging communications that help members confidently navigate their healthcare benefits.
How Toppan Merrill can help
Toppan Merrill offers several services, including document creation and management, sales enablement, omnichannel communications, printing services, and more. We deliver best-in-class solutions that help you respond quickly to changes in regulations, client needs, and markets.
Learn more about how we can help you with mission-critical health plans communications with our health insurance communications software.
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