MetroPlus Health Plan Uses AWS to Serve High-Risk Members in NYC

Identifying and connecting with high-risk individuals who may need help accessing health care and social services during the COVID-19 pandemic presents many challenges. MetroPlus Health Plan collaborated with other organizations to design and implement an AWS-built chatbot to address those challenges.

As part of a cross-sector collaborative COVID-19 response effort in New York City, MetroPlus Health Plan saw a need across communities to connect vulnerable Plan members with services such as medical and wellness hotlines and food and prescription access assistance. MetroPlus Health Plan used an algorithm to produce a list of 85,000 individuals considered to be at high risk if they contracted the virus. Then, using Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Health Plan built an SMS-based chatbot allowing it to essentially check in on those individuals with a script designed to determine a person’s needs and then connect that person to services that could help.

MetroPlus Health Plan worked on AWS and with other organizations to design and deploy the chatbot over the course of 3 weeks and, using the AWS-built solution, began reaching out to members at the beginning of April 2020. It sent 1,000 text messages on April 2, scaled to 10,000 by April 10, and had reached out to more than 80,000 of its members by the end of May. MetroPlus Health Plan was able to track identified member needs, make changes to the SMS script, and track resulting engagement rates. “I am deeply, deeply grateful for all the technical expertise that we got from AWS—all the assistance in designing the solution,” says Amanda Parsons, MD, MBA, deputy chief medical officer at MetroPlus Health Plan.