Episode 43: Payers Engaging Patients, with Frank Hone from Healthx

As Vice President of Engagement at Healthx, Frank Hone leads the engagement strategy area, helping customers to better connect with their members and providers, while developing business models to help improve “action-oriented engagement.”

The Healthx suite of digital engagement solutions meet the needs and opportunities of a diverse customer base of healthcare payers, with emphasis on administrative cost reduction, member steerage toward best use of the healthcare system, and member health improvement.

Frank’s engagement thought leadership stems from his experience in consumer and healthcare marketing. He also recently served as Chief Engagement Officer at Healthcentric Partners, Inc., a firm uniquely focused on engagement strategy and marketing consulting for employee health and well-being improvement.

Frank was formerly Director of Sustainable Engagement at Healthways, where he led efforts to elevate engagement, give it stronger context, and develop a customer-focused strategic framework. He served as the organization’s thought leader and evangelized across the enterprise and with a variety of customers.

His 2008 book, Why Healthcare Matters, How Business Leaders Can Drive Transformational Change, was written as an Employer’s Guide to Healthcare Consumerism, and offers a blueprint for organizations seeking to adopt a consumer-centric mindset around individual health decisions and healthcare choices.

He worked in consumer healthcare marketing with several NY ad agencies, including 12 years at Ogilvy Healthworld, where he served as Executive VP of the Global Business Group, and a member of the Board of Directors. He was responsible for defining and driving organizational strategy, new business planning, service expansion and internal cohesion across 55 network offices in 36 countries.

He was an innovator and thought leader in the area of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs at Medicus Consumer/DMB&B and Rubin-Ehrenthal, both NY-based ad agencies. He held account management responsibilities for leading national and global accounts. Frank also ran a new product marketing consulting firm and gained consumer packaged goods experience during his early years in advertising.

He learned from W. Edwards Deming in a seminar course during business school and applies Deming’s principles of quality and process improvement to engagement strategy.   A magna cum laude graduate from Boston College with a BA in Economics and Communications, he earned his MBA at Columbia Business School.

Follow Frank on Twitter @frankhone, see his LinkedIn profile, reach him by email at fhone@healthx.com, and see more at the Healthx website.

00:00 Frank explains Health Plan Member Engagement.
03:30 How the consumers in the healthcare realm are changing and becoming more proactive and technology-based.
04:50 The need for current health plans to evolve.
05:40 How the ability to integrate data sets will improve health plans and help them become a source of guidance.
07:50 How healthcare technology, health plans and providers tie in together in the changing healthcare landscape.
12:30 Where is the line between the payer and the provider in the future of healthcare?
15:00 Frank explains how Home Healthcare works.
16:15 How the stigma against insurance companies now can encourage health plans to move towards transparency.
17:20 How health plans can change to reduce consumer suspicion and stigma.
19:35 Is the patient the key to transformation of payer perception?
21:50 Frank talks about the book he wrote, “Why Healthcare Matters: How Business Leaders Can Drive Transformational Change”.
23:00 The emerging shift in investment in employee health and well-being, opening up opportunities for employers and health plans in terms of accessing health systems and utilizing more health tools in the market.
25:00 The need for an established “firewall” for health plans.
27:00 The types of health tools available to health plans and consumers in the current healthcare market, and how they can be utilized to benefit the healthcare market.
32:30 The next step to build mobile integration into data sets and health plans.
33:50 What Healthx helps payers accomplish in the healthcare space.
35:00 For more information, Frank can be reached by email at: fhone@healthx.com, by phone at: 9173757716, or at healthx.com and on LinkedIn.