Self-Funded With Spencer Podcast Spotlights Empara
Ben Callaghan, chief experience officer at Empara, was a recent guest on Self-Funded With Spencer, a podcast hosted by Spencer Smith that focuses on the self-funding space and the benefits industry.
In the interview, Ben shares his journey from design entrepreneur to healthcare innovator and talks about some of the central challenges in the healthcare industry and the crucial role that well-designed technology can play in addressing these issues. He also discusses Empara’s innovative initiatives and explains how the company is significantly enhancing healthcare experiences and impacting the industry.
Below are some key highlights from the conversation.
Listen to the full episode here and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
On Empara: “Empara allows anyone who needs to deploy a benefit to members access to bleeding-edge technology at a price that makes sense for their business. It's highly configurable and amplifies the current solutions, teams and people that they have in place in ways that other solutions don't. It’s delivered as a fully native iOS and Android app as well as a web app. It allows anyone responsible for delivering a benefit to members to do so in a way that feels more consumer-grade and at a higher level.”
On Em, the adaptable AI assistant: “We are currently in beta testing with our virtual AI assistant named Em. What'sinteresting about what we're doing is that you can deploy your own assistant that's fully in context to you, as a group, for example. We can feed the model all of the plan documentation, any written documentation on your add-on solutions, whether that be your virtual care provider, or a specialty pharmacy card. It can be named and branded to your specifications, and really is all about that context.”
On the future of Em: “The future of that will be interrogating actual claims data. We have a data type in Empara that we call our ‘insights,’ which is done a little bit more manually right now, sort of custom set to you if you were the group. We're going to be interrogating claims and actually delivering that relevant content to members. I mentioned earlier the experience that people expect in other retail markets. When you go to those pages or screens, it's customized to you. It's based on what you last searched for, it's based on your preferences. We want to see the same thing happening in healthcare with our member engaged.”
On configuring ecosystems for better outcomes: “We need to drive behaviors that improve outcomes and lower costs. What Empara does and offers is the ability to configure that ecosystem around your groups. It's all about connectivity and integration. A lot of the work we do is on the data side, where we want to streamline eligibility and file sharing between these trading partners. In some cases, we're actually integrating right with the benefits enrollment system, so that we become sort of a secondary record of truth and we're passing that along to the different downstream partners in that system. But inside of Empara, you can set up, at the group level, those partners, add-on solutions, particular plan designs that the AI assistant was talking about, and all of your custom notices and in-app engagement.”
On the “controversial” choice of not sending a physical ID card: “It seems kind of silly, because you can take your phone and pay for everything, you can do everything else on your phone. What we've done is we've actually worked really hard to do some of these basics way better. We split coverages and we ingest supplemental coverages as well. So we'll do major, medical and pharmacy, but we'll break those out. We'll do dental and vision, but we'll break those out on their own cards. You can tap and share and fax and print out your ID card. You can still go print one if you'd like to, but really, that digital-first strategy, just we need to reinforce that this is a valuable place to come, and as a member, you're gonna get a lot out of using this technology.”
On how members are incentivized to download the app: “One of the key things that we found is involving the benefit sponsors, and even the HR departments at the employers or groups, in that process. In our system, we have built a robust message center where we can stitch together all of the service providers in that ecosystem around the group and extend logins for them. We're integrating the HR people there to answer benefit questions, to answer questions about the company. We're actually ingesting employee handbooks, and either through our AI assistant Em or through the HR person, they're able to answer any questions about their benefits and their complete package. By providing that touchpoint, we're kind of training members that ‘this is a valuable place to come, you're gonna get a lot out of this, and you're gonna get the answers that you need.’”