On Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.
This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Sarah Watters, a behavioral scientist for Wellth, a technology platform that works with health plans to improve patient outcomes and treatment adherence.
Watters offered insight on how certain incentives or financial rewards can help change patient behaviors, and why some insurers have embraced Wellth’s app.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tell me more about Wellth and your work there.
We partner with insurance providers as well as actual providers—integrated delivery networks and things like that. We work with some of their more complex populations that have multiple chronic conditions, who are really struggling to take their medication or really to do any kind of positive health behaviors. We work largely in Medicare Advantage, but also with a number of Medicaid populations and also some commercial populations.
I take the latest and greatest academic insights and what’s known from the evidence base, and figure out how we can apply that into our product so that we can drive these behaviors effectively.
We all struggle to do things that are good for us, and largely that applies to health behaviors. We want to work out more, we want to make sure we follow through on commitments with our friends. There are a lot of things that we want to do in our lives that we don’t do. My job is to figure out how we can get people to actually follow through on these really good intentions.
Are there certain incentives that work better than others?
With Wellth members, we use a loss-based rewards framework. At the start of our programs, or each month, we give our members a little bucket of money—so, like, $20–$30—and then every day that they don’t do their behavior, we end up detracting from that amount. That’s a really effective way to promote behavior change, especially among lower-resource populations. Certainly that’s not an approach that everyone loves, depending on who you are and what your goals are. But there are other ways to do it. Social proof—so saying, “You’re the only one who hasn’t done it out of this cohort of people” can be very effective—especially in a workplace. We work with some workplaces that are self-insured, and that’s a very powerful way to do it.
Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?
That it’s all just making sure people have information. Information is everywhere for us: We are all on our phones. You can get whatever you need—any information you need—at any time. In order to actually drive behaviors, we need to be with people in the moment. What emotional state are they in? Do they want to do this? Do they have a poor experience that they’re remembering? We need to think through the whole context of the picture instead of just saying, “Here’s a pamphlet,” or “Here’s a website,” which is not, altogether, that helpful.
What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?
Knowing I’m meaningfully helping people every day, which is kind of corny, but it’s really true. Getting to talk to our members, and seeing how just even taking their medication every single day has helped them improve their health and quality of life.