How Behavioral Economics is Transforming Healthcare Engagement with Karen Sussman Horgan VAL Health TRANSCRIPT

Empowered Patient Podcast

Karen Sussman Horgan is the Co-Founder and CEO of VAL Health, a behavioral economics consulting firm that helps healthcare organizations drive engagement and nudge patients to improve their health and lifestyle choices. Behavioral economics is the science of understanding how patients make irrational choices based on biases, fear, and faulty analysis of outcomes and risk. Nudges can be carrots or sticks, but in healthcare, the focus is on making the right path easier to follow, reducing friction, and introducing positive reinforcements rather than penalties.

Karen explains, "We work across the entire healthcare ecosystem. We think about digital health companies, how do you drive enrollment and engagement, and how do you optimize the journey? There are communications for that. We do a lot of work with payers, which is closing gaps in care, but also just improving the member experience in general with providers. It could be around provider adoption of new care pathways, but it's also about population health. We work with employers on wellness programs and pharma on that adherence. So think about where information alone isn't driving people to think about their health or take care of themselves. We create the nudges to help make that happen."

"It's the science of understanding that we as humans are irrational. We have a bias toward the present. We have an aversion to loss and regret. We overweight probability. There are dozens of known biases, and what we do is harness them rather than asking people to change their biases. So let me give you a few examples to bring this to light because right now people are probably like, What is a bias? So think about Netflix when you watch an episode. First of all, you have choice overload when you get there. So it's giving you recommendations, but it also defaults you into the next episode because it plays on the fact that we have a status quo bias, and we're lazy, and we're just going to sit there and binge-watch. "

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