Case Study: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts achieves improved behavioral health access and increased provider telehealth adoption with Amwell's Well Connection

BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts Solving Behavioral Health Needs by Addressing Access Challenges

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest commercial payer serving 2.8 million members, partnered with Amwell to build Well Connection, a telehealth program that deliberately included behavioral health. The health plan faced a major access challenge—about 1,600 member calls per month seeking behavioral health services—and low provider telehealth adoption (only ~4% of network providers billed for telehealth in 2018), driven by limited reimbursable codes, technology costs, and reimbursement concerns.

To address this, Blue Cross used Amwell’s Well Connection platform and a multi-pronged program: they expanded reimbursable telehealth codes, let network providers deliver care on the Well Connection platform (including for non-Blue Cross patients), offered incentive payments tied to utilization and feedback, and provided two-year onboarding, training and support (with plans to use Amwell’s automated onboarding tool). Early impacts include behavioral health now representing over half of telehealth claims, plus measurable goals to connect a high share of the 1,600 monthly callers, increase provider capacity (after-hours slots), improve medication management and medication possession ratios, and track provider/member satisfaction as the program scales across 12,000 providers.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Greg LeGrow

Senior Director of Consumer and Provider Solutions