CareMessage

CareMessage leverages technology to help safety-net organizations fulfill the essential needs of underserved populations. Their innovative platform helps centralize and automate communication efforts, providing personalized support designed to improve health outcomes. CareMessage’s patient engagement platform reaches over 7 million underserved patients across more than 40 states annually, and has served over 18 million patients to date.

The Problem
Healthcare technology in the U.S. continues to leave low-income communities and communities of color behind. Today, low-income and underserved patients account for 70% of all deaths and 75% of all healthcare costs, which are largely driven by lifestyle choices and poor compliance with prescribed treatment. Patients from low-income communities are particularly impacted by lower levels of health literacy, disease self-management, and medication adherence, and in turn, experience worse health outcomes that cost the U.S. healthcare system between $106 billion to $238 billion annually. While healthcare providers share education about chronic disease self-management and monitor health outcomes, the limited resources that healthcare providers have are spread thin. The vast majority of primary care providers only see their patients one to two times a year for 20-30 minutes and are unable to offer proper education and self-management support. Across the U.S. healthcare system, there is a lack of interventions focused on addressing behavior change for underserved populations. Few intervention applications truly address the problem of low health literacy and patient engagement, and none serve the lowest socioeconomic populations who are most at risk for chronic preventable diseases.

The Solution
CareMessage uses mobile technology to improve access to critical health information and effective self-care management. By translating patient health records into targeted messages, CareMessage empowers safety-net clinics to improve health outcomes and reduce the cost of care for patients. These messages, which include appointment reminders, large-scale outreach, health education programs, and one-to-one direct messaging, are automatically delivered to individuals and groups of patients via text and voice messaging. These messages focus on chronic diseases, including type II diabetes, obesity, hypertension, depression, and maternal health. According to the Pew Research Center, texting is the best way to engage with the underserved, as text messaging is inversely correlated with education and income and has a 99% open rate.

Using language that is conversational, multilingual, culturally and linguistically appropriate, and easy to understand, CareMessage creates messages that are tailored to meet the needs of populations from low socioeconomic backgrounds while also focusing on the underlying social drivers that influence the health status of their patient populations. Their model allows the fees paid by Federally Qualified Health Centers to heavily subsidize the cost of CareMessage for Free and Charitable Clinics, enabling them to reach patients in some of the most underserved communities. CareMessage’s interventions help increase vaccination and cancer screening rates, decrease no-show rates, and improve HbA1c levels, among other positive clinical and operational outcomes.