Consumers say their health insurer offers them lots of digital healthcare tools to manage their benefits, but they don’t consider those tools very user-friendly.

As a result, many consumers use those tools infrequently, and they don’t think health insurance companies built their web features with the consumer in mind, says a new survey from HealthMine, a developer of clinical data analytics and related information management services for healthcare plans and others.

The survey of 550 consumers finds that 83% of participants use digital health tools on their health insurer’s website, but only 21% and 30%, respectively, use their insurer’s digital healthcare portal regularly or believe the portal does a good job in providing answers to their healthcare questions.

“Most health plan members believe their plan’s communications are impersonal and centered around bills rather than healthcare guidance,” says HealthMine vice president of product Brennan Collins. “The majority of members are either disconnected from or rarely visit their health plans on social media and member portals.”

Other findings include:

• Communication and insight. 73% of respondents don’t think their insurance plan understands their health very well and 60% want to hear from their health plan about more than bills.
• Chronic disease. 52% of consumers with chronic conditions hear from their health plan just once per year or less about their disease.
• Social media. 63% of health plan members don’t communicate with their plan on social media; but 78% who do follow their health plan on social media say it’s helpful.
• Price transparency. 39% of consumers say their health plan does not offer a tool for checking prices.

“It is better if plan sponsors communicate through each member’s preferred channels and share health intelligence—not just data,” Collins says. “Health intelligence leverages health data and provides real-time personalized guidance to manage health. Plans that deliver that kind of value will better engage their members.”