AHIP Session Recap: How Closing Gaps in Communication Leads to Closing Gaps in Care

In today’s healthcare landscape, more technology doesn’t always mean better outcomes. Even the most well-intentioned digital tools can complicate the member experience, creating confusion instead of clarity. At the 2025 AHIP Conference, Relay hosted a session, led by CEO, Steve Gillin, featuring healthcare leaders, Holly Bolinder, Director of Marketing at Blue Cross of Idaho, and Jeff Willinhganz, Managing Partner at Accenture, where they explored a critical topic: simplifying communication is the key to closing care gaps.

Steve opened the session by identifying a fundamental issue: health plans are struggling to communicate effectively. Why?

Jeff from Accenture confirmed this pain point, sharing national trends and startling statistics, including just 18% average portal engagement and 20% average health insurance app downloads per year. While health payers believe they are offering the right digital tools, there is a clear disconnect on how they are used by members.

Jeff went on to highlight how Accenture is helping clients distinguish between being “digital-first” and fostering “digital engagement.” True digital engagement is about interaction, not just connection. This means channel optimization, timely outreach, and meeting members where they are, not on the tools that they think members should be.

Holly from Blue Cross of Idaho shared how her team took this philosophy to heart. By leaning into digital tools—especially through their partnership with Relay—they saw significant improvements. Key insights included: over 190,000 members reached via Relay and a 777% increase in message volume from 2020 to 2024, with 2.5M+ messages sent annually.

Simplification and integration emerged as the north stars of their strategy—more communication isn’t the goal, more effective communication is.

The discussion then shifted toward the bottom line. Steve teed up the connection between communication and cost: when members don’t engage, plans lose out on a number of important things, including cost savings opportunities and improved member health outcomes through care gap closures.

Jeff affirmed these challenges and shared how broken member journeys can lead to:

Accenture’s advice? Don’t get overwhelmed by mapping every step of the member journey. Instead, identify the immediate opportunities for improvement and take action on them right away. This incremental approach delivers both measurable outcomes and internal momentum, while allowing for testing and learning as you go.

Holly followed up with a real-world example from Blue Cross of Idaho’s welcome experience where they leveraged their partnership with Relay. By using a familiar and secure digital channel, like the Relay Feed, to connect and engage with members, BCI calculated some of the cost savings opportunities:

Finding effective digital channels to communicate with members is the key to achieving outcomes like these, but implementing these programs is easier said than done. This concept leads to the final point in the conversation.

Steve closed the session by posing the final challenge: How do you get started?

Holly offered a candid reflection of her experience. At BCI, the organization is risk-averse—especially around policy and data. But they started with a small, controlled pilot that focused on member engagement through Relay’s feed channel and email. By securing cross-functional alignment and adhering to strict compliance guidelines, they built trust across the organization.

Holly emphasized the importance of the trust that she was able to build within the organization. By coming to stakeholders with set processes and best practices for the approach, she secured buy-in from the important individuals who were critical to drive their digital initiatives.

Today, Holly is focusing on simplicity. While each year brings its own set of new challenges – market changes, leaderships changes, budget constraints – she feels confident in the foundation she has set for her member engagement program and will continue to optimize and simplify those journeys to best serve her member base. One-off messages are transforming into connected, responsive journeys. Content agility is now baked into every campaign. And her team at BCI will continue to look for opportunities to better connect and engage digitally with their members.

Jeff closed with three key takeaways for healthcare leaders:

By focusing in these three areas, payers can start closing any communication gaps that exist at their organization. Each payer may be at a different phase of their own digital maturity, but these tips can work regardless of those differences.

Next Steps: If you’re ready to simplify your member engagement strategy and close more care gaps, reach out. Relay is here to help you take that first step and each one after.

To learn more about how Relay can help with driving actions to improve quality scores, reach out to sales@relaynetwork.com.