When we started IncentOne, giving rewards to drive healthy behavior made sense to us. It seemed simple. Reward people for the behaviors that made them healthy and saved the system money. For some reason, it was not resonating. This was not only because in the mid 2000s this was a new concept but because of something we missed. What we didn’t realize was that the healthcare industry only thought in terms of your “plan design”- the benefits, co-pays and in-network and out-of-network fees built into your health plan. Everything they did at that time was based on this health plan design. If they wanted to drive a behavior, they would tinker with fees and co-pays. What seemed simple to us was Greek to them. Until we understood that, we could not craft the proper messages. We changed our message to “our program complements your plan design for behaviors that are not being driven by your plan design. It is not meant to replace it, but to work hand in hand to supplement it. If that makes sense, then think of it as American Express Rewards for mammograms.” Once we did that, their response was different “oh, we’re not undoing plan design, but for all those things that plan design can’t do, or isn’t doing well, we would have this program. That’s great. We always struggle driving lifestyle factors like nutrition, weight management, and exercise that plan design was never meant to address.”