People of Perficient: Meet Marybeth Wrabel, Payer Specialist

With robust industry expertise, our healthcare team achieves excellence in transforming how the world’s biggest brands connect with consumers and grow their businesses. I recently sat down with one of these experts. Marybeth Wrabel is a lead of payer strategy at Perficient who applies her 20 years of expertise in the payer industry to deliver excellence for our clients.

Marybeth, thank you for joining me today. I’d love to kick off with hearing more about your background in the payer industry. 

I’m a tenured marketer and digital product management leader with 20 years of experience working for national and international payers. When I was in my mid-twenties, early in my career, a marketing leader saw my potential. She would continuously encourage me to lead initiatives that would put me in a position to grow. I developed confidence in my ability to navigate completely new and uncomfortable situations. I built my career by following through on promises and going above and beyond for my constituents.

My colleagues quickly began referring to me as a subject matter expert in various aspects of the payer business. 

During my career in the payer space, I got the opportunity to lead a global team of Marketers. I ensured I was able to make genuine connections with each of them and bring them together as a team. I developed a program to motivate them to think more strategically in their daily work. They built a better brand through strategic thinking and growing capabilities within their respective regions. One of them told me, “We live all around the world, but you never make us feel that way.”

More recently, I led a cross functional group of Agile product owners and their respective peers across digital, analytics, marketing and segmentation. I was responsible for strategy and delivery. That team is one of the best I’ve ever been a part of. Through mutual trust and strong communication, we helped each other grow in areas where we didn’t have extensive expertise. I helped many in the data and analytics group to learn the payer business, and I learned a lot more about data, technology and delivery.

EXPLORE NOW: Marybeth Wrabel, Author at Perficient Blogs

How did you come to work for Perficient? What makes you stay and want to do your best work? 

I got an offer from a payer an hour before Perficient made its offer. I chose Perficient for the variety of work and opportunity to grow in my career. The ability to learn continuously is important to me. Additionally, I will have the opportunity to work in provider and medical technology as our clients think strategically about breaking down silos. From the consumers perspective, the healthcare experience is connected. They don’t see the silos that businesses create for themselves. Healthcare consumers do not think of payers without thinking of providers, and they do not pursue the medical technology they need without thinking of how a payer can help them attain it.

Describe your current role at Perficient. How are you applying your experience with payers to serve our clients? 
Today, my role as a payer specialist within Perficient’s healthcare practice gives me an opportunity to help guide sales opportunities and support clients with strategy and delivery. Payers have so many constituents to serve. The strategies, experiences, and messages for each constituent group is truly unique if you expect to earn their engagement. The company culture at Perficient is one of openness, collaboration, and respect. I’m enjoy working on cross-functional strategic teams. There is mutual respect for different backgrounds, strengths, and contributions.

After spending nearly my entire career with payers, I have developed a perspective on many aspects of their business.

Payers have much potential to engage with their constituents in new and improving ways.

Achieving this engagement is determined by a payer’s strategic goals and appetite for change. It’s fascinating to see payers and providers around the country shift to integrated delivery models. This shows that there is a desire to control the entire experience for members from service to payment. This is also an attempt to control costs for highly engaged populations. There is great opportunity to help payers improve member experiences in this area.

EXPLORE NOW: Empowering our People: A Culture of Collaboration

After decades of experience in the payer industry, what continues to excite you about your role?

I value the variety of the challenges that we solve for our clients, at every stage from pre-sales to delivery. Working for payers, I would focus exclusively on the challenges directly impacting my segments and constituents. In my role at Perficient, I get the opportunity to apply my expertise more broadly. On my team, I value the different perspectives and deep expertise my colleagues apply to their work.

After two decades at payer companies, I’m pleased that I am able to utilize my experience to help my company and my clients grow. It’s common to see people with a long tenure at payers. Because of this, actively introducing new ideas is valuable. I enjoy listening to what my talented colleagues have to say while brainstorming solutions.

How are you seeing the shifting focus onto the quintuple aim affect the payer industry and the clients you serve?
I’m proud to work with clients that are forerunners in health equity. These organizations strive to help bridge the gap of systemic health inequity and racial injustice. They have freely shared their findings and challenges obtaining self-reported race and ethnic data, assessing its accuracy from other sources, and even designing a program that meets high validity and reliability standards.

If payers and providers are striving to improve health outcomes, it can’t just address the health outcomes of specific groups. It has to include everyone.

LEARN MORE: The Emergence of the Quintuple Aim

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build everyday within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

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