Medicare annual enrollment period: Driving impact during unprecedented times

The challenge

A major regional health plan was looking to identify and execute innovative partnerships to increase their 2021 Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment. Historically, the client relied heavily on in-person sales events, contributing to the majority of total enrollments. Given a challenging annual enrollment landscape, including COVID-19 constraints and an election year, they recognized the need to significantly shift their strategy. The Vynamic team was tasked with developing and executing an out-of-the-box approach to drive MA enrollments.

The approach

The Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) that runs October through early December is the make it or break it 8-week window for MA health plans. Understanding that business as usual was not possible during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vynamic team quickly screened, negotiated, and executed multiple innovative partnerships that were critical in connecting with seniors to drive enrollments. Vynamic focused on four key areas to deliver on the client’s AEP goals:

Established guiding principles

Vynamic worked with senior leadership to establish guiding principles for potential partners. These helped to ensure that the partnerships tied back to the client’s mission and contributed positively to the community.

Applied selection framework

Quickly applied a structured framework to assess the 50+ partnership options to determine priority using the criteria of reach/access, relevance, and ease of execution in connecting with seniors.

Identified opportunities for shared value

Partnerships are most successful when an opportunity for both partners to benefit are identified. The Vynamic team structured over 9 partnership agreements in 2 months by focusing on win-win opportunities.

Tracked partnership success

The team applied PMO tools to monitor the success of partnership efforts and developed and deployed contingency plans to ensure successful KPI attainment and AEP success.

The result

Vynamic was able to quickly assess the partnership options, screen against key selection criteria, and negotiate execution plans with the partners.  Taking an agile approach allowed us to quickly double down on partners that exceeded plan and pivot from tactics that were not preforming, allocating limited resources effectively. This approach contributed to the health plan meeting their enrollment goals despite challenging circumstances.