Aparna Abburi, president of Medicare and CareAllies for Cigna, has been prioritizing keeping her "eyes and ears close to the ground" as she looks to keep up with trends and bolster member experiences.
Her eyes and ears are outreach services (such as customer call centers) and relationships with primary care providers. In caring for seniors, being able to use these relationships is the quickest way to identify trends and get ahead of the curve, Ms. Abburi said on "Becker's Payer Issues Podcast."
Below is an excerpt from the podcast. Listen to the full interview here.
Aparna Abburi: Keeping our eyes and ears close to the ground is really important. So I'll give an example. We have a social connector program, and we're very, very proud of that. What that means is these are individuals that are reaching out to our customers based on some of the data and analytics we have — the intelligence from the information to reach out to the customers — and just checking on them, right? So we actually make outbound calls, tens of thousands of them, to just make sure that our seniors are getting the care they need. Just checking in to say, "Hey, are you okay? Do you need medication delivered to your home? In the middle of the summer, do you have electricity turned on and cooling fans available, right?"
We're also very, very proud of a very strong partnership we have at the [primary care physician] level. That's also where we hear in terms of what might be going on in certain communities. So there are multiple ways, multiple modalities in how we gather information on what might be happening and, you know, and sometimes it's just that we all are dealing with societal challenges — whether that's our own loved ones who are seniors and what might be happening to them. Right. So we bring some of those insights as we think about innovation and solutions.