Real-time activation

Real-Time Activation is a feature designed to enhance the onboarding experience for newly enrolled UnitedHealthcare (UHC) Medicare members. It allows immediate digital engagement by enabling new members to create their accounts and access their plan benefits right after enrollment, eliminating the traditional 7-14 day waiting period. This feature ensures real-time updates and verification, significantly improving registration rates and member satisfaction.

Before the implementation of RTA, the member registration process was frequently interrupted due to delays in updating the Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) within the Enterprise Individual Mastering Platform (EiMP) system. These delays caused failures in eligibility checks, resulting in poor registration rates, as the system could not confirm eligibility or member identity in real time.

The RTA feature was launched in September 2023 during the Medicare enrollment period and has been deployed across all Medicare portals.

Problem statement

In 2022, 9% of UHC Medicare enrolled shoppers left their UHC plan before even becoming an active UHC member, resulting in a loss of $330M in lifetime revenue.

Earlier members were unable to register on Medicare portals until their plan was fully active (with a waiting period of 7-14 days), leading to a drop in registration rates. Furthermore, there was a lack of real-time updates on the application status, which decreased their confidence and made them more likely to look for other options.

The RTA feature impacts all Medicare portals.

LOBs

Consumers

For RTA members, if the MBI is not available in the backend (GPS), the MNR eligibility API will internally call CMS to validate the user-entered MBI. If valid, HSID will allow members to register. HSID will check if a Golden Record exists and, based on that, will call the EIMP real-time REST API to create or update the Golden Record in EIMP. Once a user account is created, HSID will associate the Enterprise ID (EID) with the newly registered member.

Occasionally, there may be a delay in updating the golden record for RTA members when they are redirected to the portal's dashboard. This delay occurs after they have provided their setup details and successfully completed a transaction, which includes updating the golden record with their member MBI. HSID backend logic has been updated to verify PDB data for that member to trigger the member eligibility call if the golden record response does not contain the MBI for RTA members.

RTA feature represents a first-of-its-kind experience in the healthcare industry. Currently, no other Medicare health plan providers offer immediate digital access to new enrollees in real-time.

It enables authorized consumers to access the M&R member portal as soon as they enroll in Medicare insurance.

Business values associated with this initiative include:

Success metrics

Since its launch in October 2023, RTA has generated over 16,000 net-new member registrations, with the majority of those occurring on the same day as enrollment. This enhanced engagement increases the likelihood of members staying with their UHC plan throughout the sales cycle.

The use of the Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) similar to SSN, ensures that members are securely verified. The RTA process adheres to stringent security measures, with no PII data beyond MBI and plan status exposed during registration.