Good Data, Better Marketing - How Integrated Customer Journeys Improve Patient Health

Guest speaker: Rahul Kak

Rahul Kak is the VP of customer health and experience at Aetna, a CVS Health Company. He leads marketing strategy to drive population health outcomes across Aetna and CVS Health, while driving member engagement strategy and building personalized experiences. Previously, Kak was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he led agile and digital growth engagements for more than 20 clients across multiple industries. He dedicated two years to building an agile marketing sub-practice in North America, coaching clients to build and scale consumer engagement war rooms. Kak has also held engineering and research roles at Medtronic and the National Institutes of Health.

Episode summary

This episode features an interview with Rahul Kak, Vice President of Customer Health and Experience at Aetna, a CVS Health Company. Rahul has dedicated his career to being a data-driven and compassionate marketer, guiding patients to healthier outcomes through individualized nudges.

In this episode, Kailey and Rahul dive into privacy versus personalization, how to measure patient outcomes, and how AI models can predict customer behavior.

Key takeaways

With the rise of Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and individual exchange, healthcare is becoming increasingly consumerized. It’s transitioning from B2B into B2C and, with the help of marketers, puts the consumer’s voice front and center.
Healthcare marketers would be wise to invest in technologies that incorporate all patient communications into a single tech stack. Creating better, more integrated experiences along the patient journey with fewer handoffs.
Due to COVID, patients have gotten more comfortable using telehealth services, especially for behavioral health issues. While this experience is relatively new, communicating with your patients in this way benefits the overall customer experience.

Speaker quotes

“What we are all trying to do is create a better, more integrated experience in the patient journey. You're going to see that play out with more investment in technologies that weave our customer communication platforms onto a single tech stack. CDPs that are bringing all that data together and allowing more coordinated, smart orchestration across all of our communications.” – Rahul Kak, VP, Customer Health & Experience, Aetna, a CVS Health Company