Optum Bank Data Tool Uses Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Analytics to Help People Increase Health Savings
December 05 2018 - 11:30AM
Business Wire
- Updated Optum Health Finance Journey
model gives employers enhanced strategies to help increase
engagement and health savings of employees
- Using AI and advanced analytics is
already resulting in higher savings rates, helping people with care
affordability
Optum Bank, the nation’s leading provider of heath savings
accounts, has enhanced its data and analytics tool to help increase
health savings account (HSA) savings and provide accountholders
with a better understanding of how to use their HSAs to pay for
health care costs.
Optum Bank’s updated Health Finance Journey uses behavioral
science and advanced analytics to determine what motivates
consumers to behave in certain ways. The Optum model then clusters
consumers into microsegments based on common attributes and
motivations. This provides employers that sponsor HSA qualifying
insurance plans with unique insights that enable them to develop
better targeted and personally relevant communications to help
employees save more for their health care expenses and make better
health care decisions.
This updated model is providing encouraging results. Overall,
accountholders who were targeted with new messages based on the
enhanced Health Finance Journey increased their balances, became
eligible to invest, and took the next step and chose to open
investment accounts. Specifically, the enhanced tool resulted
in:
- A 26 percent increase in one-time
contributions.
- An increase of average balances of 12
percent.
- A 23 percent increase in investment
account openings. Most health savings accountholders are required
to have a minimum cash balance before they can open an investment
account.
“Employers want access to the latest data-driven analytics and
tools that help their employees save for their current and future
health care needs,” said Deb Culhane, president and CEO of Optum
Bank. “The Health Finance Journey’s enhanced capabilities offer
employers better strategies to help them communicate the right
messages, to the right employees, at the right time. We are very
encouraged by the initial results of applying this updated
model.”
Optum Bank’s enhanced Health Finance Journey recently used
machine learning to analyze nearly 200,000 de-identified
accountholders and identified natural segments and clusters. As an
outcome of the analytics process, more than 2,000 attributes were
synthesized based on inputs such as HSA contributions and
distributions, account tenure and consumer behaviors, among others.
The final result was 20 microsegments, where a consumer within a
specific microsegment can be targeted with specific communications
most relevant to them.
In 2014, Optum created the ‘5 Stages of Health Saving and
Spending’ to map employee health care saving and spending behavior
with HSAs. These are stages that people take in their health
savings from deciding to get an HSA to optimizing their accounts
through the investment option. The Optum Health Finance Journey
works in tandem with the ‘5 Stages’ by providing employers with
deeper understanding of where their employees have progressed in
each of the stages, and helps employers with targeted
communications tactics to move employees through all five stages,
thereby increasing engagement and savings rates.
For more information about Health Finance Journey and the ‘5
Stages of Health Saving and Spending,’ visit the Optum Bank website
at: https://www.optumbank.com/resources.html.
Investments are not FDIC insured, are not guaranteed by Optum
Bank®, and may lose value.
About Optum BankOptum Bank, Member FDIC, and OptumHealth
Financial Services (OHFS), is a health and wellness company serving
more than 115 million people. Optum Bank is solely dedicated to
health care banking with more than 10 years of experience managing
health savings accounts (HSAs). With more than 5 million health
savings and notional accounts, and more than $9.5 billion in
assets, Optum Bank is uniquely positioned to guide consumers along
the journey from opening to optimizing an HSA. Health care and
finance is in our DNA.
About OptumOptum is a leading information and
technology-enabled health services business dedicated to helping
make the health system work better for everyone. With more than
135,000 people worldwide, Optum delivers intelligent, integrated
solutions that help to modernize the health system and improve
overall population health. Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group
(NYSE:UNH). For more information, visit www.optum.com.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181205005039/en/
Aaron
AlbrightOptum202-383-6403, aaron.albright@optum.com
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