Essential Insights
- Recognition drives response: Clear caller identification significantly increased Medicare Advantage member answer rates across HEDIS outreach campaigns.
- Sustained performance lift: Outbound reach more than doubled over three months, materially expanding gap closure opportunity.
- Improved ROI without added cost: Improved performance without increasing staffing, dial volume, or operational complexity.
The Big Picture
In Medicare Advantage, every answered call represents opportunity: gap closure, improved Star performance, member satisfaction, and long-term revenue protection.
A large national customer owned health insurer sought to improve contact rates within its Medicare Advantage quality campaigns. Outreach operations were structured, compliant, and consistently executed. However, member engagement was constrained by factors outside traditional campaign controls.
Members increasingly screen unfamiliar calls. Carrier level spam labeling and low caller recognition were limiting answer rates, reducing the effectiveness of otherwise well-designed outreach initiatives.
Rather than redesign campaigns or increase dial volume, the plan focused on strengthening trust at the moment the phone rang.
By improving how outbound calls appeared to members, the organization unlocked measurable performance gains across its existing outreach infrastructure.
Challenge
Across a ten-month baseline period, outbound reach rates averaged 22.52% within Medicare Advantage HEDIS campaigns.
Despite strong operational execution, answer rates were limited by:
- Member reluctance to answer unfamiliar numbers
- Carrier-level spam labeling and filtering
- Reduced trust in inbound healthcare calls
- Limited caller ID recognition
These barriers existed outside the control of scripting, staffing, or dialing strategy.
In Medicare Advantage, low contact rates directly constrain gap closure opportunity and Star performance. Every unanswered call represents both missed clinical engagement and operational waste.
Improving answer rates was essential to expanding the value of existing outreach programs without adding incremental cost.
Solution
To address these barriers, the plan enhanced its Carenet outreach programs by integrating Numeracle powered call authentication and branded caller identification into its Medicare Advantage quality campaigns.
The approach included:
- Protecting outbound numbers from improper spam or scam labeling
- Registering and validating caller identity across major wireless networks
- Displaying a clear, recognizable caller name to Medicare Advantage members
- Ongoing monitoring to sustain number reputation and performance
This capability was layered into existing outreach operations without changes to staffing, dial volume, or campaign structure.
By ensuring calls displayed cleanly and clearly represented the health plan, the organization strengthened trust at the point of contact and improved the likelihood of first attempt engagement.
Results
Visual title: HEDIS Outbound Member Contact Reach Rates Medicare Advantage
Pre-implementation average: 22.52% 1 month post-implementation: 34.62% 2 months post-implementation:: 54.45%
3 months post-implementation: 65.78%
Over three months, reach rates increased from 22.52% to 65.78%, nearly triple contact rate performance.
In December alone, more than 25,000 outbound calls were supported under the enhanced call authentication strategy.
Business impact
The increase in reachable members translated directly into expanded gap closure opportunities across targeted measures.
With more members engaged on the first attempt:
- Quality campaign yield improved
- Outreach ROI increased
- Operational waste from unanswered calls declined
- No additional staffing or dial volume was required
Integrating Numeracle’s call authentication into Carenet outreach programs nearly tripled member engagement without increasing cost.
Note to be added where design deems appropriate: Results reflect outbound performance only and do not include additional engagement lift generated through inbound return calls driven by improved caller recognition.