Healthcare Needs Loyalty Programs—Just Not the Kind You Know

From rewarding transactions to building trust, continuity, and healthier lives.

Starbucks Rewards.

Emirates Skywards.

Marriott Bonvoy.

Sephora Beauty Insider.

Different industries. Different customers. Different rewards.

Yet the principle behind them is remarkably similar: understand customers better, give them meaningful reasons to remain engaged, recognize their continued participation, and gradually build a relationship that becomes more valuable to both sides.

The scale of these programs shows how powerful that relationship can become. Starbucks Rewards recently reached 35.5 million active US members, with members generating nearly 60% of US company-operated revenue during fiscal year 2025. Emirates Skywards has grown to more than 37 million members across 190 countries. Marriott Bonvoy ended 2025 with almost 271 million members, and member stays represented 68% of its room nights globally.

Customers value these programs because they feel recognized, receive relevant benefits, and enjoy a more personalized experience.

Businesses value them because members return more often, choose the same brand over alternatives, provide richer insights into their preferences, and create more predictable long-term value.

Perhaps loyalty can therefore be described from two perspectives:

🖊️ For the customer, loyalty is the confidence to choose the same organization again without restarting the evaluation every time.

🖊️ For the business, loyalty is the privilege of being chosen again—and the responsibility to keep deserving that choice.

If loyalty programs can create such powerful relationships in aviation, hospitality, retail, banking, and food and beverage, why should healthcare be excluded?

No, the Fourth Hospital Visit Should Not Be Free

Let us clarify one point immediately.

Healthcare does not need a card saying: “Complete three cardiology visits this month and receive your fourth consultation free.”

A patient with heart failure should not receive a cheerful notification suggesting: “Since you are already receiving cardiac treatment, enjoy 20% off our weight-loss package.”

And nobody should accumulate enough admissions to qualify for Platinum Patient status.

Healthcare loyalty cannot simply copy the retail formula of rewarding people for spending more and consuming more.

The objective is not to encourage additional appointments, tests, procedures, or hospitalizations.

It is to encourage patients to become more actively involved in their health—and to build a trusted, continuous relationship with the provider supporting that journey.

So, if healthcare loyalty is not a traditional spend more, earn more scheme, what should it be?

From Transactions to Relationships

Many healthcare providers understandably focus on immediate operational and financial pressures.

They monitor no-show rates because an unused appointment slot represents lost capacity and revenue.

They work to reduce patient churn because every patient who moves to another provider takes part of their future healthcare activity with them.

Where DRG and other prospective-payment models are introduced, hospitals become increasingly conscious of the cost of each episode.

At the same time, revenue-cycle teams are engaged in a continuous effort to submit claims correctly, justify medical necessity, resolve denials, and receive full payment for the care delivered. Payers scrutinize claims because their responsibility is to control inappropriate expenditure; providers pursue reimbursement because they must remain clinically and financially sustainable.

No hard feelings.

The system is designed this way.

But perhaps providers are paying so much attention to the economics of individual encounters that they are overlooking the economics of the long-term patient relationship.

A well-designed healthcare loyalty program can help change that.

Loyalty Is Not Lock-In

Patient loyalty should never mean limiting choice or making it difficult for someone to seek a second opinion.

It must be earned through trust, quality, convenience, continuity, transparency, and meaningful value.

The real objective is simple:

When a person requires healthcare, the provider should not be one random option among many.

It should be the organization the patient already knows, trusts, and chooses first.

For an independent hospital, that means retaining the relationship within the facility and its clinician network.

For a large healthcare group, loyalty does not necessarily require the patient to visit the same building every time. A patient may use different hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, or digital services belonging to the same group while remaining inside one connected care ecosystem.

The location may change.

The relationship should not.

Know Your Customer—or Better, Know Your Patient

One of the most important benefits of conventional loyalty programs is what businesses often call Know Your Customer.

A loyalty platform reveals patterns that isolated transactions cannot.

What does the customer prefer?

How frequently do they engage?

What matters to them?

What causes disengagement?

What might they need next?

Healthcare can develop a much deeper and more meaningful version of this idea:

Know Your Patient.

A purpose-built digital channel, connected to the provider’s clinical and patient-relationship systems, can help create a longitudinal understanding of the individual.

Not merely:

• which department they visited;

• which invoice was issued;

• or which diagnosis appeared on the last claim.

But also:

• their medical history across specialties;

• preventive-care needs;

• treatment and medication plans;

• chronic-condition risks;

• appointment and engagement patterns;

• preferred clinicians and locations;

• communication preferences;

• appropriate wearable or connected-device data;

• health goals;

• and agreed information about their daily wellbeing.

This should never become a tool for discriminating against high-risk patients, manipulating vulnerable people, or selling unnecessary services.

Used responsibly, it can help providers recognize emerging risks earlier, personalize care, forecast future needs, coordinate services, and understand the likely resources required across the patient journey.

Retail loyalty helps businesses predict what customers may want to buy.

Healthcare loyalty should help providers understand what patients may need to remain well.

Continuity Is More Than Convenience

Imagine a patient who undergoes thyroid surgery and later develops a condition affecting blood pressure.

Months afterwards, they consult a cardiologist.

In a fragmented journey, the patient may need to explain the operation, the post-operative symptoms, the medications, the sequence of events, and every relevant detail again.

Some information may be forgotten.

Some may appear in another system.

Some may never reach the cardiologist.

In a connected relationship, the cardiologist does not receive an isolated complaint.

They see a continuing story.

The previous operation, laboratory results, medication history, post-operative developments, and emerging cardiovascular concerns are part of the same journey.

And continuity is not only emotionally reassuring. It can influence clinical and operational outcomes.

A systematic review examining continuity of care found that 18 of 22 studies reported significantly lower mortality with greater continuity. (BMJ) A separate analysis of more than 10 million primary-care consultations found that patients seeing their regular doctor waited an average of 18.1% longer before needing another consultation, without requiring meaningfully longer appointments. The researchers estimated that stronger continuity could have reduced consultation demand in their sample by as much as 5.2%. (INSEAD)

Patients benefit because they do not repeatedly begin from zero.

Clinicians benefit because they spend less time reconstructing the story.

Providers benefit because more informed care can reduce duplication, unnecessary revisits, and fragmented decision-making.

A loyal patient is therefore not merely a retained customer.

They are a person receiving more connected care.

The Feeling of Being Known

Healthcare is personal in a way that most other services are not.

Patients share fears, vulnerabilities, family histories, difficult diagnoses, and details they may not discuss with anyone else.

When people repeatedly receive care from a trusted provider and a familiar clinical team, the relationship gradually develops beyond the content of the medical record.

The patient knows whom to contact.

They understand how the system works.

They are more comfortable asking questions.

They are more likely to disclose important information.

They feel less like an anonymous case appearing at reception and more like someone whose story is already understood.

It is reasonable to call this a sense of safety—not a guarantee that nothing will go wrong, but the reassurance of knowing that the patient is not navigating the journey alone.

Perhaps the emotional promise of healthcare loyalty should be:

You will not have to introduce yourself to your healthcare journey every time you need care.

Reward Participation, Not Illness

This is where the loyalty model must be redesigned carefully.

I would deliberately avoid making the amount spent at the hospital the principal way to earn points.

A conventional spend-based program would reward patients for more consultations, more tests, more procedures, and higher bills.

It might also give the greatest rewards to people who are sicker, wealthier, or able to consume more private healthcare.

That is commercially familiar—but clinically backwards.

Healthcare loyalty should reward meaningful participation in health, such as:

• completing age- and risk-appropriate preventive screenings;

• receiving recommended vaccinations;

• attending clinically necessary follow-up appointments;

• cancelling or rescheduling early rather than becoming a no-show;

• completing prescribed rehabilitation or physiotherapy programs;

• participating consistently in chronic-disease management;

• using a connected medical device as clinically recommended;

• submitting agreed remote-monitoring measurements;

• completing health education or coaching programs;

• attending medication reviews;

• and achieving personalized activity goals appropriate to the individual’s condition and ability.

The important word here is personalized.

A patient with limited mobility should not be measured against an athlete.

A person living with diabetes should not lose points because their glucose result was outside target.

Someone with insomnia should not be penalized for a low sleep score.

The program should reward actions, participation, learning, and consistency—not perfect bodies or perfect biomarkers.

Evidence suggests that properly designed incentives can support healthier behavior. A CDC-published systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 randomized trials found that incentives incorporated into lifestyle-modification programs were associated with meaningful improvements in weight, body-mass index, and blood pressure. However, the researchers also highlighted the need to understand long-term habit formation and cost-effectiveness rather than assuming every reward design will work equally well forever.

Rewards can help begin a behaviour.

The long-term objective must be to help that behavior become a habit.

What Could Patients Receive?

"Healthy Points" could be redeemed for benefits that support the care journey rather than merely discounting another hospital bill.

Possibilities include:

• preventive screenings not fully covered by insurance;

• dietitian, physiotherapy, or health-coaching sessions;

• teleconsultation credits;

• discounts on approved connected medical devices;

• pharmacy or medication-delivery services;

• home sample collection;

• transportation or parking support;

• access to educational programs and support communities;

• elective appointment-convenience benefits;

• family wellness benefits;

• and rewards offered through approved lifestyle partners.

Clinical urgency must always take priority over loyalty status. A Platinum member should never receive medically necessary treatment before a more urgent Bronze member.

But convenience, additional support, educational access, and wellness-related benefits can be offered without compromising clinical fairness.

Members could also choose to donate points to community-health initiatives, screening programs, or support funds for patients in need.

That would give loyalty a social purpose as well as a personal one.

Why Payers Should Be Interested

Healthcare providers are not the only organizations that benefit when patients participate more actively in their health.

Payers may have the clearest financial incentive of all.

Better prevention, greater treatment adherence, earlier intervention, and more effective chronic-disease management can reduce the likelihood of expensive complications, emergency visits, and hospital admissions.

The principle is already being applied by insurance-linked wellness programs. Vitality, for example, allows members to earn points through physical activity and health checks, with higher status unlocking partner rewards and, under eligible plans, benefits such as reduced excesses and lower renewal premiums.

But health insurance should be careful with the familiar car-insurance analogy.

✅ Rewarding a safe driver for an accident-free year makes sense.

❌ Rewarding a patient simply for making no medical claims may not.

People do not always control whether they develop cancer, an autoimmune condition, a genetic disease, or another serious health problem. A no-claim reward may also discourage someone from seeking necessary care early.

The better principle is:

Reward healthy participation—not the absence of illness.

Payers could contribute to reward funding, offer premium-related benefits where appropriate, sponsor preventive services, or share savings with providers when better engagement produces measurable improvements in cost and outcomes.

That turns the loyalty ecosystem into a partnership between the patient, provider, and payer rather than a marketing program operated by one hospital alone.

But Will Healthier Patients Reduce Provider Revenue?

This is the uncomfortable commercial question.

If patients remain healthier, they may require:

• fewer hospital visits;

• fewer investigations;

• fewer admissions;

• and fewer expensive interventions.

Under a traditional activity-based model, that can mean less revenue for the provider.

But it does not mean hospitals must choose between healthier patients and financial sustainability.

It means providers need to expand the way they create and capture value.

A provider can earn not only when a patient becomes ill enough to require treatment, but also through:

• chronic-care subscriptions;

• remote-monitoring programs;

• payer-funded per-member care-management fees;

• shared-savings agreements;

• employer-sponsored health programs;

• post-discharge monitoring packages;

• digital coaching and rehabilitation programs;

• population-health contracts;

• family health memberships;

• and clinically governed partner ecosystems.

A diabetes or cardiovascular-care program, for example, could combine consultations, connected devices, coaching, remote monitoring, escalation pathways, and periodic reviews within a recurring membership or payer-funded model.

Metabolic—formerly GluCare.Health—has demonstrated this type of partnership approach by incorporating Oura Ring data into metabolic-care pathways, allowing its clinical teams to use sleep, stress, and other wellness information as part of personalized management. (Metabolic)

Providers could similarly partner with connected blood-pressure-monitor manufacturers, smart scales, glucometers, pharmacies, laboratories, fitness organizations, healthy-food providers, rehabilitation centers, and other clinically relevant services.

Partner-funded offers and referral arrangements may create additional revenue, subject to local regulation, full transparency, and careful management of conflicts of interest.

The provider’s recommendation must remain clinically appropriate.

A patient should be offered a nutrition pathway because the available information suggests that it may benefit their health—not because the platform has a monthly sales target for diet packages.

That line must never become blurred.

Loyalty Creates a Different Kind of Lifetime Value

Traditional patient lifetime value is often calculated from expected visits, procedures, and revenue over time.

Connected healthcare allows us to consider a broader definition.

The long-term value of a patient relationship may include:

• clinical services delivered when genuinely needed;

• preventive and chronic-care memberships;

• remote-care revenue;

• payer and employer contracts;

• partner-generated value;

• stronger adherence;

• reduced acquisition costs;

• family referrals;

• higher patient advocacy;

• and a trusted relationship maintained across several facilities within the same healthcare group.

The patient does not need to visit the same branch forever.

They need the relationship and information to follow them across the provider’s network. That strengthens retention without creating dependence on one location or one clinician. It also improves brand awareness and recommendation.

NPS can measure whether a patient is willing to recommend the provider.

Loyalty demonstrates whether they actually return.

Digital and Connected Healthcare Makes It Possible

A meaningful health-based loyalty program cannot operate through a plastic card and a simple points database.

It requires a connected digital foundation.

The patient application becomes the primary engagement channel.

The clinical system provides the relevant medical context.

The patient-relationship platform manages preferences, communication, journeys, and engagement.

Wearables and connected medical devices provide measurable inputs where appropriate.

Artificial intelligence helps identify meaningful patterns, personalize guidance, and determine when a gentle nudge—or clinical attention—may be needed.

The loyalty engine converts verified participation into points, status, or benefits.

The partner platform allows rewards to be used across an approved ecosystem.

And consent management ensures that the patient understands:

• which information is being collected;

• how it will be used;

• who can see it;

• what is shared with partners;

• and how permission can be withdrawn.

The patient should remain in control.

A loyalty program cannot build trust by quietly misusing the very health data entrusted to it.

A Familiar Idea with a Greater Purpose

People are already familiar with loyalty applications.

They understand points.

They understand tiers.

They understand challenges, partner benefits, personalized offers, and digital membership cards.

Healthcare does not need to invent an entirely unfamiliar behavior.

It needs to give that familiar behavior a better direction.

❌ Not: Spend more.

✅ But: Participate more.

❌ Not: Visit us more often.

✅ But: Stay connected, act early, and come to us when care is genuinely needed.

❌ Not: Become our most profitable patient.

✅ But: Become an active partner in your own health—and allow us to become your trusted partner throughout the journey.

The strongest healthcare loyalty program may ultimately produce fewer avoidable hospital visits.

But when care is needed, it creates something more valuable than a transaction:

Trust.

Continuity.

Recognition.

Belonging.

And the confidence to return to a provider that already knows the story.

Healthcare loyalty should not make patients consume more care. It should help them need less of it—while ensuring that when they do need care, they know exactly whom they trust.

Because the strongest loyalty in healthcare is not created by rewarding people for consuming more care, but by helping them need less of it—and ensuring they always know where to turn when care is needed.