Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Matt Loper: Helping Patients Adhere to Medication Plans

Jul 14, 2019

01:29:39

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Matt Loper, CEO and Co-Founder of Wellth, discusses using loss contracts to improve medication adherence rates. Wellth app rewards patients for taking their pills but penalizes them for missing doses, resulting in better than 90% adherence rates. The science of behavior change is complex and requires rigorous testing. The podcast also explores motivating behavior change in underserved populations, creating value through user-centric design, establishing and maintaining habits, and the complexity of human behavior and incentives.

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Quick takeaways

Rewarding patients with loss-contract models can significantly improve medication adherence rates.

Behavioral science requires rigorous testing and is more complex than chemistry in understanding behavior change.

Tying incentives to potential losses, through the endowment effect and clawback incentives, is more effective in promoting desired behaviors than offering gains.

Deep dives

Customized Health Programs to Improve Adherence

Wealth, an app and company, helps people with chronic conditions improve their health by creating customized programs based on the core principles of behavioral economics. The programs are disseminated through scalable technology and work with healthcare providers and insurance companies. By utilizing the endowment effect and loss aversion, Wealth offers rewards to motivate patients to adhere to their medical needs. The program aims to create sustainable behavior change by forming habits that stick, combining extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Results have shown significant improvement in medication adherence and health outcomes for high-risk patients, particularly in underserved populations.

Introduction

2min

Exploring the Guest and Encouraging Listeners to Share Positive Experiences

3min

Motivating Behavior Change in Underserved Populations

30min

Creating Value through Operational Procedures and User-Centric Design

18min

Survival of Classic Rock Icons in the Me Too Movement

5min

Establishing and Maintaining Habits

5min

Migration, Diversity, and Human Movement

6min

The Complexity of Human Behavior and Incentives

19min

In this episode, we spoke with Matt Loper, CEO and Co-Founder of Wellth, an app that helps people with chronic conditions improve their health through better adherence to their prescriptions. Matt’s company works with healthcare providers and insurers to provide rewards for patients who need small behavioral interventions to stay on track.

Wellth does this by “giving” patients money at the start of each month to take their pills. To prove they’re on track, they use the Wellth app to take a photograph of their medicines in the palm of their hand. But every day that they miss, they are penalized in the form of fee, which nets them less money at the end of the month. This loss-contract model is gaining notoriety and it should be: Wellth discovered that positive incentives accounted for adherence rates around 60% while loss-contract models account for better than 90% adherence rates.

Matt is quick to point out that the science of behavior change is not like chemistry, where all the inputs and outputs can be measured and is easily replicable. Behavioral science, Matt argues, is much more complex and requires more rigorous testing.

In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss loss contracts in greater depth and the complexities of the human condition.

Links

Matt Loper: matt@wellthapp.com

Kevin Volpp, PhD. Director, Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Leonard Davis Institute: https://hcmg.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/volpp70/

Kevin Volpp’s group: https://chibe.upenn.edu/

Eisenberger & Camerer: https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/eisenberger-r-cameron-j-1996-detrimental-effects-of-reward-reality-or-GQliEjHSH0

Teresa Amabile: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/publication%20files/12-096.pdf

Riding the Bike: http://blog.lanterngroup.com/?s=bike

Ran Kivetz: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/rk566

Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/

Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/

Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/

Musical Links

Fleetwood Mac – Rumors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumours_(album)

Stevie Nicks would be the IT girl today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Nicks

Simon & Garfunkel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Garfunkel