CVS Health Is Becoming the Netflix of Insurance Brands
CVS Health has, for a long time, been known as a retail pharmacy and healthcare brand. However, since completing its acquisition of managed healthcare company Aetna back in 2017, it has had much grander designs.
The merger between the two brands had been in the works for a significant portion of time, but when it was finally completed, the entire health insurance industry sat up and took notice. At the time, the deal was the largest of its kind in the health industry on record and the coming together of these two Fortune 500 brands with a combined revenue of over $245 million was set to change the health insurance sector for good.
Now, three years later, the effects of the merger are starting to be felt. CVS Health has some exciting plans for the future of its brand.
CVS Health
First, CVS Health has plans — like many other brands — to become a company associated with technology first and its main offering second. This is a pattern we're seeing more and more in digitally focused companies who all want to be viewed as "a tech company that sells [insert product or service]."
The first step in this plan is to roll out 1,500 new HealthHUB locations across the US by 2021. These locations have been tested in Houston at three branches and offer healthcare services, digital on-demand health tools, advice, and personalized care. Twenty percent of each HealthHUB is dedicated to durable medical equipment, supplies, and products. They also offer learning tables at which customers can use iPads to access both health and wellness apps and CVS Health's expanded shopping inventory.
"We have a sense of urgency about the need to bring real change to healthcare," said Executive Vice President of CVS Health and President of CVS Pharmacy, Kevin Hourican. "What's clear to us is that it will take more than incremental steps to fix what is broken in the healthcare system. That's why we're excited about how the combination of CVS and Aetna can establish an innovative healthcare model that will create an entirely new consumer experience and help people on their path to better health."
Healthflix
HealthHUBs are all well and good, but CVS Health has bigger plans. And, in a world where Amazon is poised to make its own foray into the healthcare/health insurance business, bigger plans are what is needed to ensure long term survival and a thriving brand.
CVS Health is now looking to combine artificial intelligence, virtual reality technology, and connected devices with its existing health insurance offerings. Everything the brand does is focused on making the very act of providing healthcare services more customer centric, creating the kinds of experiences modern consumers demand as well as a level of convenience that those in need of healthcare often require.
The ideas being implemented by CVS Health include offering customers the option to use virtual reality technology to see a real doctor from the comfort of their own homes. AI chatbots can be used to help people get answers to frequently asked questions without the need to wait on the phone to speak to a real person, while having the secondary benefit of freeing up those operators to deal with more complex issues.
Connected devices can also be used to send health data to doctors. This means that more people can be treated in their own homes — freeing up space in hospitals and allowing patients to maintain more quality of life while receiving treatment — as they can be remotely monitored instead of requiring a more hands-on approach.
"There are things you can do at scale that are hard to do in healthcare," said CVS Health Chief Digital Officer, Firdaus Bhathena. "We're not going to invent every connected device and we're not going to come up with every breakthrough. But we do have a direct connection to millions of consumers and want to leverage that and bring value and bring innovations to life. We can do that in a way that independently we could not have. A lot of this is not rocket science — it's giving people simple, direct access to care when and where they need it."
Final Thoughts
Healthcare on demand is a great way to bring together the two elements — healthcare and health insurance — of CVS Health's brand. Increasing the convenience of healthcare services, facilitated through health insurance, is a great way to meet the challenges of an ever more competitive industry. It's also a great way to leverage the advantages of a traditionally brick and mortar brand such as CVS Health over a primarily ecommerce company like Amazon.
You can hear CVS Health's Senior Director of API Integration and Digital Ecosystem, Melissa Person-Ashforth, speak at Digital Insurance 2020, taking place in July at the Renaissance Chicago, IL.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.
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