The pandemic has spurred us to better manage all aspects of health insurance costs and care.
Platforms can bring a broad range of those activities into one centralized location, rather than navigating between apps. And, increasingly, digital platforms are valued by consumers to track health, schedule appointments, pay the financial accounts tied to healthcare itself (including insurance) and to glean information about insurance benefits.
In the recent report “The Digital Age: Consumers See Unified Platforms As Key To Better Health,” a PYMNTS and Lynx collaboration, more than 2,500 U.S. consumers weighed in on their thoughts about what a comprehensive digital platform might do to understand, monitor and help them pay for their healthcare — and their actual health.
The appeal is significant. Consumer interest in unified digital healthcare platforms is strong across all the groups surveyed, with 81% of all consumers overall expressing some level of interest, as shown in the chart below. The greatest interest is exhibited by consumers with higher incomes, younger age groups, including bridge millennials and Generation Z and consumers living in urban areas. The data show that for each of these age groups, the overall interest exceeds 80%. As many as 80% are interested in using the platform to manage info about insurance benefits.
But privacy and safety concerns are top of mind for the consumers who are not interested in leveraging the offerings of these digital platforms. The data show that 41% of respondents who are not interested in a single digital platform say they are worried about the digital platforms’ security, and 28% say a digital platform would diminish their medical records’ security.