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Key Takeaways
- The true payvider advantage isn’t integration. It’s consumer confidence.
- Payviders can increase confidence with one promise and one accountability system between their insurance and care-delivery businesses.
- Payviders who focus just as much on the human, emotional side of healthcare as the clinical side will win out.
Payviders, as Zachary Goldberg and David Nash explained, are “uniquely situated to reestablish the patient as the central focus of the healthcare system.” Vertical integration, interoperable data, accessibility, and scale will put consumers and their health outcomes first.
But the real payvider opportunity isn’t only structural change—it’s also human change. Inspiring consumer trust and confidence may prove to be more challenging than coordinating electronic medical records or streamlining workflows. Here’s why.
Seniors don’t see integration or interoperability—they see their experiences
A recent report shows that 82% of adults aged 65 or older feel the healthcare system isn’t prepared for the changing needs of the aging population. Most find the healthcare system difficult and stressful to navigate. In short, they are deeply dissatisfied.
According to PwC, the top consumer pain point in healthcare is fragmentation. Creating a unified, secure digital ecosystem is now table stakes for payviders. But it’s not enough just to connect dots behind the scenes.
Payviders need to also connect dots where it matters most—with seniors. The most important connections are face to face and on the phone, but it’s critical to keep the relationship going in their mailbox, email, text messages, and social feeds. Showing up consistently with human messaging can earn consumer confidence.
Every interaction a senior has with a payvider—choosing a plan, visiting the doctor, receiving treatments, submitting claims, letters, phone calls, social posts—has the potential to erode or reinforce that confidence.
Bottom line: If seniors don’t feel treated as individuals with their personal health and lifestyle goals central to their care, they won’t be satisfied with their coverage or care. They’ve got to see before they’ll believe.
The payvider/consumer marketing disconnect is real
Too often, payviders fall back on insider speak when marketing themselves. They talk about seamless integration, value-based care, trusted in-network providers, or personalized outreach. Here’s the trouble with this kind of marketing:
- Seamless integration: while this sounds positive, it’s abstract. Seniors want to see tangible proof of care coordination in action.
- Value-based care: Consumers don’t like the term because they associate it with cheapness and low quality. They prefer terms like quality-focused care or patient-first care.
- Trusted in-network providers: Trust in insurers has reached a breaking point with allegations of fraud and abuse on the rise. In this climate, consumers are more likely to trust friends and family and review sites for provider recommendations.
- Personalized outreach: Again, this sounds good, but personalization from a payvider point of view may not be what seniors truly want. Too often, personalization is tied to plan type and benefit reminders on the insurer side and vaccine or wellness reminders on the provider side.
While all of this is helpful, it may not be the most valuable to someone whose goal is to lift their grandchild and swing them around. To that person, guidance on balance, strength, and stamina—functional health rather than clinical health—is true personalization.
These phrases help explain the model and how it works, but what do they do to mitigate consumer mistrust and overcome doubt? Payviders need a new messaging framework that helps seniors feel confident. It should explain how the payvider:
- Makes consumers feel protected rather than processed.
- Creates continuity before, during, and after care.
- Holds itself and its different divisions accountable.
- Sends a cohesive, easy-to-understand message.
How payviders can increase senior confidence
Start with one—one promise and one accountability system
A payvider’s one promise needs to explain how a payer/provider partnership benefits seniors. Answer why they should care about a unified healthcare experience. Show them how they’ll be taken care of and put first, how their health and quality of life can improve, and how they’ll be a partner rather than a passive patient in their health. Create a single narrative between their coverage and their care.
The traditional fee-for-service model pits payers and providers against each other in a negotiation on price and quality. That bargaining isn’t necessary for payviders, but it raises the stakes for accountability.
Seniors want lower costs and healthcare that’s easy to navigate. Payviders must show how they’re doing both by streamlining the prior authorizations and claims processes, increasing coordination and access, and improving seniors’ health. Rather than being accountable to each other as payer and provider, payviders must be accountable to consumers. To do that, they need to have visible, consistent alignment between coverage and care over the long term.
Design a system around trust and belief
Payviders can’t promise simplicity while their service experience delivers friction. Marketing alone can’t bridge the gap between what senior consumers expect and what healthcare delivers. Since COVID, trust in the healthcare system has been strained while consumer expectations have risen.
While advances in technology and pharmaceuticals will radically change the future of healthcare, one thing will always remain central—compassionate care. Too often the industry focuses too much on health and not enough on care despite the fact that health is deeply emotional. Designing the system around coordinated storytelling and messaging that advocates for consumers will be what sets apart average payviders from extraordinary ones, the ones who earn and retain seniors’ trust and belief.
Clearly, we have a lot of thoughts about senior care. Big ones. See what else is bouncing around in our heads.