Digital member experience improves for health plans, gaps remain

The digital member experience is improving, with more members using the apps their health plans offer and reporting satisfaction with the tools, according to the JD Power 2026 U.S. Healthcare Digital Experience Study.

The report, based on responses from more than 7,600 members of the nation's biggest Medicare Advantage and commercial health plans, also showed that the more consumers use a digital health app, the more they like it.

This is important as health plans navigate varying degrees of consumer readiness and digital health literacy, according to Eric McCready, the director of digital solutions at JD Power.

"Healthcare can be an incredibly complex world to navigate, with members in a wide range of different customer segments approaching their health plan's mobile apps and websites with varying degrees of digital sophistication and due to dozens of individual use cases," McCready said in a press release.

Notably, digital health apps designed to support member engagement and experience are more popular among commercially insured individuals. In 2026, 38% of commercially insured members reported using their health plan's digital app, up from 31% last year.

These apps are less popular among the Medicare Advantage crowd, the report showed, with digital app adoption actually declining in this group. In 2026, 20% of Medicare Advantage enrollees said they've used their health plan's app, down from 24% last year.

Although JD Power did not propose a reason for this trend, it could be that commercially insured individuals are more likely to be younger members still in the workforce, compared to folks enrolled in Medicare Advantage. Put simply, there could be a generational gap at play.

Still, payers do have options for increasing digital health satisfaction, the survey showed. For example, the more members use a payer's digital app, the more they tend to like it, even among Medicare Advantage members.

Among Medicare Advantage members who have been with their plan for more than five years, mobile app satisfaction is scored 655 on a 1,000-point scale. That compares to a 102 satisfaction score for those with their Medicare Advantage plan for a year or less.

According to McCready, it could be an uphill battle for Medicare Advantage plans to build that digital rapport with patients, but the data does show a key opening for growth.

"The good news is that once health plan members start spending some time familiarizing themselves with their health plan's digital channels, their overall customer experience improves significantly, but, on average, it still takes a fair amount of time to get fully up to speed," he explained. "This highlights an opportunity for health plans to spend more time on digital onboarding and member education."

Supporting a good digital experience will require health plans to not just pick the right technologies, although that is important. They must also support members with limited digital health literacy different expectations of digital member engagement, the JD Power survey suggested.

Delivering on that good digital experience is high stakes, as it can influence whether the member continues to engage long-term. For example, around three-quarters of commercial health plan members (76%) and Medicare Advantage members (74%) say they definitely will continue using their health plan app when they've had a good experience in the past.

But those who have had bad experiences aren't so sure. Only 29% of those in commercial plans and 21% in Medicare Advantage plans said they'd use the member app even after a poor experience.