Healthcare Personalization Gets Boost From Walmart

Personalization is turning into a powerful prescription for better healthcare experiences and outcomes, from finding the right provider to paying for the care patients receive.

Latest evidence of the healthcare personalization trend comes from Walmart, now partnering with Health at Scale and using the latter’s machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform to help insured Walmart employees pick their perfect practitioner.

On Monday (Jan. 31), the companies announced the collaboration “to provide personalized provider recommendations to Walmart associates and their families who work in locations where Health at Scale is offered and are enrolled in the company’s health plan.”

In a press release, Walmart Vice President of US Benefits Lisa Woods said, “Customizing services and treatments to individual needs is the next frontier in healthcare and is a major part of Walmart’s commitment to helping associates and their family members find great doctors who consistently deliver the best value and quality care in their community.”

According to Health at Scale, its platform uses analytics “to match individuals managed by insurers, employers and providers to the next best action in real-time and when needed most: whether it’s the ideal choice of treatment, an early intervention, or the right provider.”

Rather than “star ratings, reputation rankings, and volume-based metrics,” the company’s Precision Navigation solution employs AI and machine learning “to model variations in provider outcomes across thousands of health factors. The service covers 25 different specialties as well as 34 procedures and imaging.”

Precision Navigation will be integrated with Walmart’s health plan administrator’s search engine “and virtual care referrals for associates in select geographies, making it easier for plan participants to find providers that match to their unique health needs and care history.”

In the announcement, Health at Scale CEO Zeeshan Syed said, “Finding the right provider is one of the most important health decisions a patient makes. It is also one of the hardest. What we really need to optimize is the patient-provider match.”

See also: Healthcare Providers Use ‘Deep Data’ to Deliver Better Patient Outcomes

Pairing with the right provider for both better patient experiences and treatment outcomes extends to paying for healthcare too, and innovators are working to personalize that as well.

Wellness And Affordability: How Payments Practices Create Positive Patient Experiences, a PYMNTS report with research sponsored by CareCredit, notes that “Consumers used to the convenience and personalization of eCommerce and the ability to pay for goods and services online or via mobile devices now expect the familiar convenience and efficiency of digital payments to be available for their healthcare needs.”

Moreover, the research found that more than half (51%) of consumers “consider trust in the provider an important factor and 24% consider it the most important factor supporting their decision to make appointments with a provider.”

Those findings circle back to the new Walmart pact with Health At Scale and its focus on using data to aid the insured in finding better physician fits. That “fit” includes payment optionality.

As PYMNTS reported in the third quarter of 2021, “Younger consumers’ affinity for providers that make healthcare services easier to access through digital tools appears to be growing stronger. PYMNTS’ research found that the likelihood that Gen Z, millennial and bridge millennial patients would switch to providers that offer digital healthcare management tools rose from 31% in November 2020 to 35% in April 2021.”

Get the study: Wellness And Affordability: How Payments Practices Create Positive Patient Experiences