Health insurers anticipate integration challenges for ancillary products according to 2016 Health Check Survey.
Health insurers agree: Consumers want more choices for health and ancillary products. Respondents to the fourth annual Array Health Check Survey, released July 26, acknowledged the important role ancillary products play in improving the consumer shopping and enrollment experience on a private exchange. In addition, this year showed a slight increase in the number of respondents who said ancillary products can create ongoing touchpoints with consumers. As insurers work to build member-for-life relationships, creating more touchpoints with consumers and members is increasingly important.
While private exchanges give insurers the means to offer a comprehensive set of products, as the product shelf grows, complexity also increases. Managing enrollment and ongoing updates for multiple vendors with different requirements and file formats present new integration challenges. Hence, 52 percent of insurers responded that they expect integration to be either difficult or very difficult to accomplish.
In our experience, as outlined in our health insurance e-commerce ebook, there are two broad approaches to integration with ancillary product vendors. On the simple side, organizations may use PDF, CSV or other simple file formats to enable information to be exchanged efficiently and cost-effectively. On the complex side, insurers may build interfaces or use standard EDI transactions to exchange information with strategic, high-volume ancillary partners. GetInsured works closely with customers to map out the best approach to meet their business goals.
