TriHealth health coaches help members with specific disorders, such as diabetes or musculoskeletal disorders, form healthy habits. For example, a member with diabetes needs to develop the habit of testing their A1c levels regularly. But TriHealth found that many patients were inconsistent with their newly formed habits.

Creating sustained behavior change in members can be very difficult, but doing so can provide great health benefits to members and large cost savings for plans. Therefore, TriHealth worked with PatientBond to determine their members’ individual motivators through psychographic segmentation.

TriHealth gave PatientBond the names and addresses of their members using data from three employers (a school system, a large manufacturing organization, and TriHealth Health System). These organizations were already using health coaches, which made their employees great candidates for this pilot program. From this information, PatientBond uses proprietary consumer data to segment members into the five psychographic segments detailed below.

PatientBond’s psychographic segments
Percentage of prevalence in the general population

PatientBond was able to attribute members to one of these segments with 70% accuracy based off the member’s name and address alone. TriHealth then took the process a step further by surveying members with PatientBond’s 12-question quiz. The quiz takes 90 seconds and increases segmentation accuracy for members who take the quiz to 91%.

Interestingly, TriHealth’s population differs from the general population. While for the entire country, “willful endurers” are the most common segment, for TriHealth’s members, “balance seekers” and “self-achievers” were the most common.

Once PatientBond provides TriHealth with their members’ psychographic segments, TriHealth inputs the psychographic group into member online profiles that health coaches can access. Health coaches can now adjust member outreach scripting accordingly.

TriHealth trained their health coaches about the different segments, and the health coaches were eager to learn more about the members they were responsible for. Health coaches found that the psychographic insights were ‘‘energizing.” They became even more attentive to their patients as they tried to pick up on clues based on the key words and triggers PatientBond provided for each segment population.

The training culminates in a role-modeling practicum in which health coaches can show that they have mastered the content and can customize outreach based on psychographic segments.

Below are example outreach messages that health coaches could create for members with diabetes based on their psychographic segment.

Example scripting for members with diabetes based on psychographic segments