Why Open Enrollment Readiness Should Be a Year-Round Strategy

No return policy

It’s likely that the millions of members concurrently researching co-pays, deductibles, and prescription drug costs during the peak season (typically November through mid-January) will be even more befuddled this year due to the growing number of Medicare Advantage Plans. 

Whether the situation will be comparable with combining Black Friday with Cyber Monday and Amazon Prime Day is anyone’s guess, but there are myriad parallels to holiday readiness,  which is something that Akamai has assisted retail customers with for years. 

Holiday gifts like toys or books, however, often come with a return policy. There are no returns or exchanges allowed on enrollment choices until the following year. Therefore, it’s paramount that members who research their healthcare insurance and make a plan decision for the entire year have a positive experience when doing so.

Thinking beyond peak times

Q4 can bring surprises when it comes to performance and security, which is why protection needs to be a year-round priority. The healthcare ecosystem is increasingly  targeted by attackers in an evolving threat landscape, so thinking beyond peak times is crucial. 

Payers are a prime target 

Although all healthcare data is lucrative on the dark web, payers in particular are a prime target for attacks, says one respondent in a new report from Porter Research. 

“[Malicious actors] will definitely see payers as an additional or newer target-rich environment and realize there could be a lot of potential in monetary gain going after this market segment – especially with the amount of both financial data, and clinical data,” said one payer IT executive in Porter Research’s deidentified qualitative survey. “I would expect the [malicious] actors out there to realize there's a pretty good opportunity in our space to make money.”

Malicious actors are getting more creative and specialized, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are getting more complicated and costly.

Preparation is the best medicine

Whether the attackers' goals are monetary  or political (like the recent Killnet DDoS attacks), there’s no better time than peak season to target an organization. 

Advance preparation, in the form of implementing security, performance, and checklists, is the best medicine. 

Security

Akamai App & API Protector helps payers protect their infrastructure from DDoS and application-layer attacks. 

On a quarterly basis – if not more frequently – it’s good to double-check that the correct blocklists, allowlists, and bypass lists are tied to the appropriate firewall policies. Akamai Bot Manager delivers advanced bot detection to spot and avert the most evasive threats, so you can stay ahead of the evolving bot landscape. 

Also make sure to review your critical transactional endpoints to identify areas of websites and applications that have the potential to be targeted by credential stuffing or account takeover attacks.

It’s important to remember that caching also plays a role in security. It’s most often thought of as performance enhancement, but Akamai’s ability to cache and deliver website content from the edge can drastically reduce the load on your infrastructure in the event of an attack. 

Performance

Reviewing traffic with Akamai mPulse for real user monitoring provides up to 13 months of historical data. Reports and graphs from previous years can determine whether there were issues at previous load levels, so adjustments can be made.

If it takes too many clicks for existing or potential members to find what they are looking for, there is a high risk that they will leave the webpage without engaging with your content, filling out a form, or enrolling.

Open enrollment and other core health plan workflows will run smoother than ever with load balancing that redirects traffic to different servers; a content delivery network that ensures lightning-fast connectivity; and a load testing platform that allows you to see if your systems can handle the necessary volumes.

Checklists

Michael King, an engagement manager dedicated solely to Akamai payer clients, suggests a checklist approach, such as:

• Can your current infrastructure handle at least two to six times the amount of sustained traffic compared with a normal day?

• If you launch new webpages or member-facing messaging quickly, will your websites and applications be ready to handle the burst of short-term traffic?

• Are your websites and applications set up for failover in the event there are issues?

• Do you have sufficient alerts and monitoring in place to catch issues quickly?

What’s next?

The pandemic fast-forwarded the digitization of healthcare — and when it comes to usage trends and delivery expectations, there’s no going back. 

Members have moved far beyond simply using telehealth services, as demonstrated by the 6 in 10 respondents in UnitedHealthcare’ssurvey who said they have used the internet or mobile apps during the last year to comparison shop for medical services. 

Since up to 60% of the country’s insured population may hop online to make one of their most important buying decisions in Q4, getting ready should be a year-round process.

Learn more

Join Tony Lauro, Carley Thornell, and other Akamai healthcare industry experts for a live, open enrollment lunch-and-learn on Thursday, July 20 at 12 PM ET.