Crowdsourcing and Collaboration: SPARK COVID-19 Employee Innovation Challenge

Centene's enduring success is in large part due to the ingenuity of our more than 71,000 employees. SPARK is a crowdsourcing platform designed for Centene employees to introduce ideas and solutions to help drive our success. This year, a challenge was launched to identify new ways to serve our members and provider network throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Two following winning ideas were selected:

• "Add Virtual Care into Find a Provider Search" ­recommends enhancing online search functionality to include virtual care.
• "Masks for Members" ­aims to supply high-risk members with face masks.

The video below outlines how SPARK's innovative process resulted in two COVID-19-focused enhancements to benefit the communities we serve. Teams across the enterprise have been hard at work, making each idea a reality.

Centene's SPARK Challenge encourages individuals to create, implement, and deliver care and services. Challenges are launched with a single question to jumpstart creativity. This event posed the question: How might we best help our members and providers manage the COVID-19 pandemic? Once ideas were submitted, colleagues across the enterprise voted on the top initiatives. Ideas evolved and were refined to offer the best possible solutions for our members based on employee feedback.

The diverse crowdsourcing process promotes an enterprisewide pipeline for engagement and employee-driven ideas. SPARK further supports Centene's commitment to delivering accessible, high-quality healthcare to millions of members. For more information on how Centene is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in vulnerable communities, visit our Resource Center.