Humana Employees Offer Valuable
Feedback on New Products

As we develop some of our new products, we sometimes offer them early to our own Humana employees who provide us with real-world experience. Their continuous feedback and suggestions help us progressively improve our consumer-directed products and benefit designs. These suggestions help us gain a better understanding of how the product works, how Humana members access and use information online and assess the value to our contracted physicians — whether that’s in the form of timesavings or less cumbersome administrative processes.

“We not only develop these products with input from consumers, but we also consider how consumers use the products to see what their experience is,” said Joe Woods, Humana’s director of product design.

Over the past couple of years, this concept has yielded valuable information on what works or doesn’t work, Woods noted, and the consumers’ experience figures into both new products and modifications to existing products. For example, the storedvalue card currently being used by some Humana members who have a Flexible Spending Account or a Personal Care Account was designed to help reduce the hassle factor and inconvenience associated with collecting their copayments. With the stored-value card, physician office staff can simply swipe the card to collect the officevisit copayment. Patients don’t have to go to the trouble of writing a check, a timeconsuming process that not only delays their departure from the office but also creates additional accounting paperwork for office staff. The cards proved so popular with our Humana employees that Humana began rolling them out to its general membership last year.

“Consumerism figures into all of our product designs at Humana, but we’re also working to ensure that product designs and innovations meet the ever-changing needs of our members, employer groups and participating providers,” said Woods.

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