Listening at Scale: How a Multi-Line Practice Manager Study Transforms Provider Experiences
A top-ranked East Coast health insurer sought to better understand how provider offices experience their organization across three major business lines: Commercial, Medicaid, and most recently, Behavioral Health.
The DRG’s partnership with them began in 2016 as a focused initiative to capture insights from practice managers in Commercial provider practices only. Since then, we have grown the initiative together into a broader, multi-line program – expanded to include Medicaid and Behavioral Health due to the success and organizational value of the original study, as well as to support growing needs within the organization.
health insurance
Today, the insurer uses this multi-line practice manager satisfaction study to:
- Identify key drivers of provider satisfaction and provider offices’ likelihood to recommend the insurer
- Measure performance by business line and provider type (PCP vs. specialist)
- Track year-over-year trends in service performance
- Benchmark performance against regional competitors
- Uncover areas of strength and opportunity to improve provider relationships
- Continuously support evolving business needs through new modules and lines of business
The study plays a critical role in helping the organization evaluate and improve core experience touchpoints across service, claims, and digital tools – especially as internal teams work cross-functionally to reduce friction and elevate provider satisfaction.
The Solution
Since our partnership began, The DRG has continuously modernized and evolved the study with a mixed-mode approach that improves access to hard-to-reach practice manager and provider audiences.
A flexible survey design preserves core questions for year-over-year trendability while allowing for dynamic modules that are updated over time to reflect new topics, emerging priorities, and business changes over the years – including the recent addition of Behavioral Health as a growing strategic focus.
Besides modernizing the study design, we have also enhanced reporting over time to provide more engaging, solution-oriented findings that offer both direction and context for smarter business decisions. Analyses and insights are broken out by business line and provider type, offering the insurer a nuanced view of performance gaps and expectations. The DRG’s long-term collaboration with the insurer’s customer experience and insights team – as well as with internal marketing, service, and business development stakeholders – ensures that findings remain actionable and relevant.
As part of the program, The DRG also delivers competitive benchmarking, giving the insurer insight into how their service compares to regional competitors. Rather than conduct separate studies, this cost-effective, integrated design captures both internal and competitive provider feedback in a single streamlined approach.
The Wins
Since its launch, the practice manager satisfaction study has evolved to reflect its growing value in guiding enterprise-wide improvements.
A major milestone came in the study’s first few years with the introduction of NPS tracking, adding a competitive lens that hadn’t existed before. This enabled the insurer to monitor performance over time and focus improvement efforts where they would have the greatest impact. The DRG uses NPS insights to recommend targeted improvements, helping the organization take a more proactive, focused approach to experience enhancements.
Just as importantly, the study has delivered strategic consistency. From the start, two key drivers have remained central to provider satisfaction. Rather than shifting priorities each year (or in reaction to a single wave of data), the insurer has been able to anchor its strategy around these consistent, validated themes to improve performance over time. Notably, this has helped them maintain a strong service reputation, with NPS scores holding above competitors and improving year-over-year in both Medicaid and Behavioral Health.
The program has also served as an early warning system for emerging challenges and competitive threats by flagging key satisfaction and competitive gaps before they became widespread issues. Most recently, findings helped the insurer navigate a major provider portal transition, identifying usability concerns and support gaps that required more than additional employee training to resolve. Ongoing insights around major areas of focus continue to inform system and process improvements for the portal.
With each wave of this study, The DRG has delivered targeted, actionable recommendations. As a result, the study continues to reduce friction, strengthen provider relationships, and support smarter decision-making across the business.
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