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Managing Change: 5 Musts For EHR Adoption at Scale

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Managing Change: 5 Musts For EHR Adoption at Scale

Author

Jonathan Meindel
Director of Life Underwriting Innovation, LexisNexis Risk Solutions

November 2024

Electronic health records (EHRs) are key to delivering a simplified buying experience for most applicants, at the best pricing that mitigates mortality slippage. However, many carriers still don’t routinely leverage EHRs for life insurance underwriting, which has negative consequences on underwriting expense and efficiency. It also can inhibit your ability to appeal to younger demographics with a faster, less invasive customer experience.

From our experience working with top 10 carriers to adopt EHRs at scale, we’ve identified one critical factor that helps unlock the promise of EHRs: effective change management. Here are five aspects of change management that underpin successful EHR adoption.

1. Make EHRs a Strategic Priority

Among carriers that have effectively adopted EHRs at scale, the imperative for EHR adoption starts at the top and permeates the entire organization. Strategic alignment, supported by change management initiatives and training programs, can help you benefit from a virtuous cycle as adoption increases.

That virtuous cycle works like this: Because underwriters are trained and supported to make decisions using EHRs, decision rates go up. As decision rates go up, underwriters feel more confident and work faster. Because underwriters work faster, cycle times decrease, and the customer experience improves. Then, as the customer experience improves, you can offer a differentiated experience and establish a competitive advantage.

For example, we helped a top 10 life insurer adopt EHRs at scale, enabling the carrier to:

  • Reduce cycle times by up to nine days
  • Increase placement rates by up to 10 percent

Notably, the carrier initiated a pilot EHR solution prior to COVID — and when the pandemic hit, was better positioned to pivot to a more streamlined medical underwriting process while maintaining business profitability.

2. Communicate Clearly and Proactively

Once you’ve established EHRs as a strategic priority, you also need organizational buy-in. When stakeholders understand the importance and value that EHRs can provide, they’re much more likely to support the shift — and less likely to resist change.

Stakeholders include:

  • External stakeholders, such as distribution partners and customers
  • Internal stakeholders, such as customer experience and actuarial teams
  • End users, such as underwriters

Communicating clearly and often with underwriters is critical because their buy-in will help determine if your organization is to adopt EHRs at scale.

  • Highlight their contribution. Underwriters must understand their pivotal role in the company’s EHR journey and how their day-to-day activities feed into the organization’s broader strategy.
  • Focus on what’s in it for them. People are more motivated to change if they benefit directly. For example, emphasize how EHRs can enable more confident, faster decision-making so that underwriters can make more aggressive offers with lower likelihood of appeals.

3. Start Small and Set the Right Goals

Next, what about implementation? Here are some keys to success:

  • Start with a test team. Identify a small test group of underwriters who can provide feedback and iterate over time. This group can also serve as internal champions as you develop competency and continue the rollout in phases.
  • Set clear and achievable goals. Clear, transparent goals provide clarity and help everyone know what they’re working toward. They also make it easier for management to align performance incentives with the behaviors they wish to encourage. Not sure what to measure? Leading carriers measure EHR utilization rates and decisioning rates very carefully.
  • Create tight feedback loops. Weekly reporting can help underwriters shift to new behaviors and move away from old ones. For example, if an underwriter regularly orders additional evidence, tight feedback loops can help determine if the evidence was necessary — and if not, provide support and training to encourage future decision-making based off the EHR.

4. Train and Support Underwriters

Ultimately, your organization’s ability to capture the return on investment of EHRs rests on underwriters’ shoulders and their proficiency in making decisions off an EHR. For an underwriter used to decision-making with an attending physician statement (APS) or going back to applicants with follow-up questions, it may feel uncomfortable to use EHRs to make decisions. By providing comprehensive training and support, carriers can support underwriters to develop the confidence and competence to use EHRs for medical underwriting.

5. Pick the Right Partner

Finally, it’s important to align your strategic roadmap with that of your EHR solution provider. With the landscape changing so quickly, it’s critical to work with a provider who will continually offer a relevant solution with industry-leading coverage rates and enhanced capabilities. And because digital medical data unlocks more sophisticated risk assessment techniques — such as linking medical and nonmedical data to identify hidden opportunities for accelerated underwriting — you need a partner that can help you leverage EHRs as your capabilities evolve.

LexisNexis Health Intelligence is the only EHR solution built for adoption at scale. We’ve seen firsthand what stops carriers from achieving their desired business outcomes with EHRs — and we’ve built a solution that gets you to work faster:

  • Higher hit rates and access to twice the data that’s available from other vendors
  • Higher-quality data that enables underwriters to make decisions on an EHR up to 79 percent of the time, without ordering additional evidence
  • Integration with distribution partners’ data systems, for faster communication and greater transparency
  • EHRs that are 30 percent shorter, supporting fast, confident decision-making without losing the critical information underwriters need

Get one step closer to EHR adoption at scale. Learn more about LexisNexis® Health Intelligence.

 

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions

At LexisNexis® Risk Solutions, we are passionate about using the power of data and advanced analytics to help life insurers make better, timelier decisions in a world of hidden risks and opportunities. This is why we make it our mission to provide essential insights to advance and protect people, industry and society.  Our life insurance solutions can help reduce the time it takes to obtain critical information from days and weeks to seconds and hours. Gain valuable insight for knowing your prospects and customers through every step of the policy life cycle with unique data and advanced scoring analytics while upholding the highest standards of security and privacy. https://risk.lexisnexis.com/insurance/life-insurance-solutions

 

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