In our most recent webinar “Best Practices with Member Marketing Materials,” Jill Pepe, Healthcare Consultant and industry veteran at BluePeak Advisors, shared key insights and best practices for creating compliant, effective marketing materials for multilingual members. The discussion centers around the updated rules and regulations outlined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) and key findings to help health plan teams develop marketing materials that set them and their members up for success.

In this recap, we will cover several key takeaways from both a regulatory and marketing perspective, ranging from compliance with the ADA to the new multilingual package insert requirements. 

Prioritize Accessibility

Health plans should carefully consider their membership demographics, and how specific health and socioeconomic circumstances impact accessibility to health plan information. For example, out of 100 million beneficiaries, many have some form of disability and 76% of those individuals with disabilities are unemployed or underemployed. This illustrates the necessity for providing accessible information about plans and coverage and facilitating additional accessibility requirements, such as providing braille or large-text formats.

Consider Beneficiaries’ Language(s)

Guidance from the CMS requires health plan companies (?) to incorporate considerations for how they are accommodating their multilingual beneficiaries. According to the CMS, where more than 10% of the population in a covered region speaks a language other than English, health plans must provide accurate, high-quality translated materials. The purpose of these guidelines is to enforce equitable health plan information access, ensuring the information available is fair, non-discriminatory, consistent, accurate, and comprehensive across languages.

Therefore, it is critical that health plans work with trusted, experienced translation vendors to develop optimized workflows to manage large translation volumes without sacrificing quality or accuracy.

Approach Model Documents

In relation to model documents provided by the CMS, several examples indicate the language that is considered variable and those that are required. Using samples, such as the Evidence of Coverage (EOC) our webinar walks viewers through options for updating materials vs rebuilding them, manually creating them vs leveraging software, and what sections have indicators of including optional language.  Health plans should also understand how translation and remediation processes and reviews need to be built into the overall filing timelines with the CMS to avoid compliance issues or member miscommunications.

Conduct a Quality Review

Developing a sound quality review strategy is critical to avoiding errors in your documents. As a best practice, your review strategy should:

• Create an outline of what needs to be reviewed
• Identify the reviewers based on different levels required
• Gather all source materials
• Create a checklist
• Develop a timeline

Content that requires a review typically includes the language used, contact information (internal, external and state agencies), benefits (required, supplemental or excluded), and disclaimers (required and internal). Conducting an assessment of the content enables the end-member to receive comprehensive, accurate information.

To ensure no components of the review process are lost, it is beneficial to develop a checklist consisting of:

• Section or chapter outline
• Cross reference to source materials and requirements
• Crosswalk benefits in the Plan Benefit Package (PBP) to materials
• Ensuring brackets and carets are removed before print
• Assess against internal brand standards

Additionally, reviewers should have access to this checklist as well as all source materials, such as guidelines, contact information, benefit grids, and templates.

Conclusion

With Medicare Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) season rapidly approaching, there is no better time to refine your strategies for connecting with members through accurate, accessible, and multilingual marketing materials. To learn more about these considerations and to hear expert insights into preparing your teams accordingly, access the full webinar here.

For additional questions about health plan marketing, or to get in touch with TransPerfect to discover how we support leading health plan companies empower their beneficiaries by developing accurate, compliant health plan marketing materials, please reach out to healthcare@transperfect.com.