COVID has stopped many events this year, but Medibank’s annual Hack for Health wasn’t one of them. More than 100 of our people came together this week, to find innovative new ways to make interacting with Medibank simple and memorable for our customers, patients, providers and the community.
For the first time, one idea won both the major award and the People’s Choice Award. The winning concept aimed to make it easier for customers to receive accurate information about orthodontics benefits. The team proposed an app to simplify the numerous calculations customer service team members need to do to provide an accurate overview of benefits payable. The idea will now be progressed through Medibank’s Innovation Council.
10 ideas were selected for the Hack, chosen from 69 initial submissions. These ranged from how to provide more clarity to customers when they’re considering a life-changing procedure, ways to better support customers who need to go to hospital during their 12-month pre-existing waiting period, improving our online claims experience and how to better support our customers with medication compliance requirements.
Team members from across the business came together virtually for the Hack and while it was a different experience than previous years, the energy was high, the collaboration was active and the engagement was strong amongst the teams as they used online tools to focus on structured problem solving. The advantage of working virtually also made the day more accessible for some.
‘Many of the ideas for this year’s Hack for Health come directly from a team member’s experience trying to help a customer - someone recognising an opportunity to do something better or wanting to address a situation that’s caused some frustration to a customer” says David Lochrie, Senior Executive, Digital Solutions and Services.
By bringing together people from different parts of the business with different knowledge and skills to focus on a particular issue, it opens up many more possibilities about how to address it in a practical, doable way.
This was the third year Medibank has run its Hack for Health program and later this month, one of the previous winning ideas - a self-service claims portal for customers - will be piloted in some stores.
