It’s a regular laugh fest over at Unitedhealthcare
Here at Outliers, we’ve always known insurance is important. Sometimes infuriating (ever try to understand an explanation of benefits form?) or interesting perhaps … but funny? Can’t say we’ve ever run across any droll indemnity repartee.
Insurance company Unitedhealthcare, however, thinks it is hilarious, and they’ve started a video website, UHC.TV, to prove it. The site, which launched this month, features original comedy videos aimed at educating and entertaining viewers, including a short video on heartattack warning signs featuring actress Elizabeth Banks and brief clips of stand-up comedians cracking wise on topics such as grocery shopping and exercise on the site’s “Funny Bone” channel.
Along with its forays into comedy, UHC.TV features informational segments from health experts, educational videos on healthcare benefits and “man-on-thestreet” pop quizzes on various healthcare topics, designed apparently to highlight the average Joe’s general healthcare ignorance.
Along with tickling viewers’ funny bones, the website is designed to make healthcare information more accessible to today’s new media users.
“An increasing number of consumers prefers to access and share information via their social networks online and through their smartphones,” Yasmine Winkler, Unitedhealthcare’s chief marketing, product and innovation officer, said in a news release. “With UHC.TV, we are making it simple and engaging for people to learn about their personal health because improving patients’ decisions, whether related to lifestyle or their access to care, is critical to their total health.”
In other words, Unitedhealthcare is looking to give new meaning to the term viral video. developing guidelines. A companion report, Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews recommended 21 standards for ensuring a valid review. The Annals of Internal Medicine report came up with 11 of what it called “key components” of quality guideline development.
These included recommendations on determining the composition of a guideline-development group and the scope the guidelines will cover, and on establishing conflict-of-interest policies as well as decisionmaking, recommendation-review and guideline-updating processes.
While the Annals of Internal Medicine article appeared deadly serious with an earnest desire to help, it made Outliers think of a presentation at the 2007 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference where HIMSS Analytics President and CEO Dave Garets and John Glaser, then-vice president and CIO of Partners Healthcare System, gave a tongue-in-cheek presentation on “The Art of Stalling” and “The Art of Patronizing,” which touched on topics such as “We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Benchmarks” and how to use the “indecipherable diagram ploy.”
During the “The Art of Stalling” segment, Glaser talked about how to block a CEO’S bad idea while making it appear that you’re working on it. This included establishing a 50-member multistakeholder committee assigned to write a mission statement and setting a consensusbuilding policy where “a 19-1 vote should be considered a tie.”
Of course, before doing that, you may need to build consensus on what is considered consensus.