Is 10% Engagement Enough?
Engagement can say a lot about a population’s interest in a point solution, but it rarely tells the full story. When just 10% of eligible members enrolled in a maternity program, one employer questioned whether the solution was worth keeping.
Read on to:
- See how this employer looked beyond surface-level engagement metrics to understand who was enrolling
- Compare the risk and outcomes between participants and non-participants
- Discover how the client was able to support a confident renewal decision
Overview
Back in 2020, a large global manufacturer implemented a maternity-based point solution to address a growing concern across its workforce. Women were a fast-growing segment of the employee population, and high-cost maternity cases were on the rise.
Following a comprehensive search, the employer selected a maternity point solution that appeared to be a strong fit—innovative, reputable, affordable, and met with overwhelmingly positive employee feedback at launch.
Nearly two years later, the employer reviewed its second annual performance report from the vendor. The report was polished and optimistic, highlighting frequent engagement among users, strong satisfaction scores, and robust utilization of program features. But one metric stood out—and raised an important question: only 10% of eligible members had engaged in the program.
At first glance, that number felt low. With roughly 15% of the population eligible, a 10% engagement rate meant the program was reaching just 1.5% of covered members overall. The employer needed to know: Was that enough to justify renewal—or was it time to move on?
The Discovery
Engagement alone couldn’t answer the real question. To understand whether the program was delivering value, our team went to work using a dataset consisting of nearly two years of point solution enrollment metrics, health plan eligibility data, and self-insured medical and pharmacy claims files. Aggregated, integrated, and matched at the individual member level, we were able to depict a 360-degree view of their program. We then evaluated the program through a five-pillar methodology grounded in a simple principle: health outcomes and financial results are byproducts of engagement and behavior change.
When participating members were compared to a matched cohort of non-participants, Artemis discovered that the program was:
- Attracting higher-risk members
- Yielding meaningful differences in healthcare claims utilization, patient behavior patterns, and health outcomes
- Driving overall financial savings.
In short, the program wasn’t reaching everyone. But it was reaching the members who mattered most.
The Action Plan
Beyond guiding a confident renewal decision, the analysis also revealed opportunities to strengthen the program moving forward. Artemis identified that 82% of participants were employees, while only 18% were spouses or dependents, signaling an opportunity to improve engagement through more targeted, household-level communications.
The Outcome
As engagement and utilization increase, the client expects continued improvement in outcomes and will track performance over time through Artemis to ensure the program continues to deliver value.
The Takeaway
There is a difference between measuring activity and understanding impact. Without the claims-level context and a measured way to connect outcomes to initiative, employers risk cutting programs that are quietly delivering their greatest value to the members who need them most. Likewise, they may be investing in solutions that are not as effective as engagement metrics alone may indicate.
Want to make this success story your own? Reach out to learn about the ways Artemis can help you evaluate the performance of your digital health solutions and programs.