Florida Blue to roll out digital health and well-being program

Platform from Welltok enables members to track health progress or access services, says Susan Lee.


Florida Blue, which insures one of every three residents in the state, is enhancing its wellness programs with the rollout to Florida employers of a digital health and well-being program that’s designed to be personalized for each employee.

The new program thus adds to an increasing number of insurance companies that are focusing on wellness programs for their members.

Working with consumer health platform vendor Welltok, the insurer has launched the “Better You Strides” program that gives members free access to tools and resources via the platform.

For example, an expecting mother can access a prenatal application, connect with a care coordinator, participate in a nutrition program and join an online parenting community. Members also can find preventive services and benefits available to them or where to go to get the most affordable care.

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Florida Blue, which has volumes of data on its members, is sending data to Welltok to analyze and create a Personal Health Itinerary, a custom-made plan with recommendations to improve wellness for a group of employees or even just one individual. Predictive risk scoring is part of the member profile created on the platform.

Members can access their itinerary with a smartphone, tablet or laptop to track their progress or seek support services. To join the program, members fill out a comprehensive questionnaire covering health status, level of exercise, lifestyle, risk factors such as tobacco use or high blood pressure, and goals they want to meet, among other information. The data is run through algorithms in the platform, which then enables a member to assess and select a wellness program.

When a member logs into the platform for the first time to register, if the member is male the platform will offer information on men’s health, “which is personalization right at the start,” explains Susan Lee, senior director of health promotion and quality at Florida Blue.

Members also are being incentivized to participate in wellness programs by earning points when certain activities are completed, which can be redeemed for rewards such as premium discounts, gift cards or time off from their employer.

“The more information about myself that I provide to the platform, the more personalized my plan will be,” Lee says.

Welltok got the platform contract from Florida Blue by offering a highly configurable platform to manage multiple types of data sources along with a variety of available interactive health apps for members to download and a website, Lee says.

“We piloted five companies and scanned the industry looking at available platforms, but just because a platform is good does not mean it has the back-office operations capability to scale,” Lee notes. “We also were able to put our own internal programs on the platform.”

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