Each year, we speak to health plan executives and survey a range of health plan leaders to learn which strategic issues are their biggest challenges—and where they’re looking for guidance.

This year, we asked respondents to rate 31 issues on a scale of "A" to "F," with "A" indicating the greatest interest in learning more from Advisory Board researchers about the topic.

In 2019, the top areas of concern for the surveyed health plans showed that plan leaders are notably concerned about how their product models intersect with provider service delivery. But they’re also raising diverging challenges across their different business lines—driven by shifting purchaser demands.

Top Five Topics from the 2019 Health Plan Advisory Council Topic Poll

As we begin to investigate these topics, we’ve noticed a few key changes from what plans have prioritized in the past:

• 1. This year, plans are more focused on gaining and maintaining membership than on immediately lowering medical costs.In previous years, surveyed plans executives tended to lean towards prioritizing lowering medical cost. This year, plan priorities uniquely favored increasing revenue.

  As more players enter MA and employers face low unemployment rates, the competition amongst plans stiffen. So it’s natural that plans focus their efforts on gaining and maintaining members by differentiating themselves using benefit design, member satisfaction, and digital innovation. (In fact, anything with the word ‘digital’ scored highly.)

  2. Plans are starting to incorporate additional benefits in an effort to manage high-utilizers and satisfy low-utilizers. This year we have heard an unprecedented interest from plans in benefit design. Not about increasing copays or narrowing networks, but about what more they could offer purchasers through additional benefits or wellness programs.

  As fellow plans start experimenting with product design, plans are eager to be the first to figure out which additional benefits manage medical spend for high-utilizers and while still showing value for low-utilizers, who often wonder what they are getting in return for their high monthly premiums.

  3. Plans see increased plan-provider coordination as the missing key to high member satisfaction. Topics related to provider partnerships rose to the top of our survey—but they were all for the sake of increasing member satisfaction. Members are frustrated when their plan and their doctor tell them contradicting information about care or coverage.

  We’ve found that Medicaid plans are particularly interested, because they want to provide quality care and manage high-risk members but often struggle to get enough mindshare from providers to initiate coordination efforts.