How Medicare Advantage Member Engagement Influences Satisfaction

Medicare Advantage member satisfaction levels have increased in 2021, but member engagement has remained low, according to the JD Power 2021 US Medicare Advantage study.

“Medicare Advantage plans have begun to position themselves as community health organizations, realizing that the key to better outcomes is more active engagement with members to encourage preventive health and smart utilization of provider resources,” explained James Beem, managing director of global healthcare intelligence at JD Power. 

Strong Medicare Advantage member engagement led to a boost in member satisfaction scores on a 1,000 point scale. However, members who did not have any engagement with their health plans reported overall satisfaction scores that were 54 points lower than members who did engage with their plans.

Three health plans outranked the others in Medicare Advantage member satisfaction: Kaiser Foundation Health Plan which scored an 846 out of 1,000 points, Highmark which had an 834 member satisfaction score, and Cigna HealthSpring which received a score of 822.

The study found that members were not as actively engaged in their own health in 2020 as they were in previous years. Only 55 percent of Medicare Advantage members were considered actively involved in managing their own care. 

Primarily, members engaged by checking on the coverage policies for treatments and services or by requesting the generic version of a drug.

One of the major positives that emerged from this study was the finding more than three out of every four Medicare Advantage members (78 percent) were registered for their payers’ member portals and two out of every three members had logged in. This is a slight uptick from the previous year.

The study found significant differences between enrollees who were 65 to 68 years old and in their first year of the Medicare Advantage plan membership when compared to members who were 69 years or older and not in their first year on the health plan.

New Medicare Advantage members reported having worse health than members who were already in a Medicare Advantage plan. Slightly more than a third of new Medicare Advantage plan enrollees reported having “very good” or “better” health. In contrast, almost 40 percent of the established Medicare Advantage members reported the same conditions.

Additionally, new members tended to have lower income. Whereas nearly six in ten established members (56 percent) made $50,000 per year or more, less than five in ten new members could say the same.

These results sync with recent data from Better Medicare Alliance (BMA). 

A recent BMA-commissioned report found that Medicare Advantage members were more likely to be in a low-income bracket than traditional Medicare beneficiaries. While BMA did not identify significant differences in health conditions, Medicare Advantage members seemed slightly more prone to have chronic illnesses.

“Despite recognizing the importance of member engagement, many plans are struggling when it comes to information and communication,” said Beem. “When plans do get that engagement formula right, satisfaction, advocacy and retention all improve significantly.”

Earlier in the year, JD Power released its annual commercial member health plan study. The study found that member satisfaction overall had improved among commercial health plans, rising ten percentage points in 2021 as opposed to only one percentage point in 2019 and six in 2020.

The health plans that achieved the highest commercial health plan member satisfaction scores were Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in South Atlantic (791), Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in California (782), Cigna in Virginia (777), Humana in Florida (777), and Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan (774).

In the 2020 JD Power commercial member health plan study, only one health plan—Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Maryland—achieved a score above 800 points (802 points).