Improving healthcare for new mothers and their newborns

New parents often struggle with where to find accurate information about what to expect with their new baby’s arrival. Helping parent(s) to understand early child-development milestones, home-safety, and how to emotionally cope with the needs of a newborn and the responsibilities it brings– and support other household members — is at the core of the Baby’s First program.

WellCare of Nebraska’s Baby’s First program was designed to help improve mother and infant health, reduce Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), and provide resources for those families in need. The program is offered to all mothers in Nebraska with no cost to enroll.

CLIENT OVERVIEW
Website	WellCare of Nebraska
GoMo Health Solutions	Personal Concierge™
Project URL	Baby’s First: A Postpartum Program from WellCare Health Plans
Cognitive Techniques	BehavioralRx®

Our Goals

Improve:

Mother and baby physical and emotional health
Postpartum healthcare education
Pediatric vaccine compliance
Relationship bonds between members, families, and WellCare
Family planning and birth spacing
Utilization of WellCare services
EPSDT and well-care visits
HEDIS scores and Star ratings

Decrease:

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS)
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
Infant abuse and neglect
Costs of healthcare
Emergency Department usage

GoMo Health leveraged its proprietary emerging science, BehavioralRx, the science of precision health, to build the program and determine the engagement strategy, approach and content delivered.

The following behavioral and cognitive techniques were applied:

Suggestion Technology / Intervening at the right time
Conditioning Technology / Reinforcing target behavior
Reduction Technology / Persuading through simplifying
Tailoring Technology / Persuasion through customization

Baby’s First is a 100% permission-based, opt-in postpartum education program. Specific needs of each subscriber are identified through an initial onboarding survey and ongoing health-related data collection that stratifies subscribers by risk level, delivering content and resources to support them how and when they need it most.

The program delivers infant-care messages to mothers until their babies reach 15 months old. Messaging is customized based on the mother’s self-professed need for support and includes links to WellCare-branded GoMo Care Pages™ that deliver deeper content and videos. Moms receive up to six messages per week until the baby is six months old. After that, the mother receives two-three care messages per week for the duration of the program.

Resources are focused around healthy child-rearing, postpartum and pediatric provider visit and vaccination reminders, education on SBS, calming and coping techniques, healthy-parenting motivation, local support resources, answers from parent surveys, and more.

“I am a primary care physician and it was great to see this resource for myself, but also to recommend it to my patients. Thank you for this service!”

Program Participant

“An excellent way to keep track of everything baby!”

Program Participant

Cost savings per member per month

For the first year of baby’s life, those who were enrolled in the Baby’s First program had considerably less cost per member per month (PMPM) than those who were not enrolled. All amounts are ROI savings percentages for payers PMPM.

Families enrolled in the Baby’s First program have experienced:

Fewer prescription fulfillment costs
Fewer emergency room visits
A reduced number of hospital admissions
Overall lower costs associated with the health of their baby

DOWNLOAD THE RESULTS

In just over a year, the GoMo Health Baby’s First Program has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the cost of care per member per month. Learn more about how the program has helped medicaid babies in rural Nebraska.

DOWNLOAD THE ROI REPORT »