Closing Healthcare’s Greatest Gap | Part 3: The Challenge of Point Solutions

Welcome to Closing Healthcare’s Greatest Gap. In this third in a series of five blogs, we’ll examine the fragmented consumer experience and business inefficiencies created by the tremendous growth of point solutions.

350,000—And Counting

The popularity of healthcare point solutions—applications and technologies that help users address a specific health or well-being issue—has increased dramatically in recent years, with more than 350,000 digital health apps available today. [1]

Unfortunately, the growth of point solutions has produced unintended consequences. Many employers and health plans are overwhelmed by the sheer number of apps they have to vet, implement, manage, secure, and then monitor to ensure employee and member engagement is optimized. In the vetting process alone, there are thousands of third-party point solution vendors to choose from. In fact, an estimated 50 percent of organizations are working with up to nine digital health solutions at any one time. [2]

Overseeing such a wide array of vendors is inefficient and time-consuming, creating an administrative burden that can rob an organization of time, money, and resources. And if an employer or health plan decides to use multiple point solutions to cover a comprehensive range of health issues, the costs can add up quickly. To make things worse, the data collected by each app often exists in a separate silo. To solve this problem, each point solution must be integrated with all of the other solutions. The need for system and data integration increases, and so does the cost.

The Challenge of Payer Disintermediation

The proliferation of point solutions also creates another challenge for health plans: diluting the perceived value that payers provide. For example, for every stand-alone app that a payer offers, its members now have the opportunity to bypass the health plan and connect directly with the point solution. As a result, it becomes more difficult for the health plan to build a relationship with its members and earn credit when its services produce beneficial results. Dynamic white labeling of a point solution can highlight and promote a plan’s brand throughout the member experience, but very few apps are engineered to offer this possibility.

Consumers Are Frustrated, Too

From the consumer side, point solutions create similar challenges for members and employees. Apps are everywhere. Having access to so many choices and information may seem like a positive in terms of making care more effective and available, but it can often overwhelm consumers, causing them to not act at all. In fact, half of consumers today say that they have avoided seeking care altogether because it requires so much work. [3]

So, What Can Be Done?

What can health plans and employers do to manage point solutions more efficiently and simplify the healthcare experience for their members and employees, so they become more engaged? 

What consumers need is not more choices but guidance, not more information but clarity. 

What’s required is a single platform that can integrate multiple point solutions, as well as other third-party vendor partners, to create a seamless member experience. Such a platform can guide each member to the most clinically relevant point solution, simplifying the entire process. It can also provide true data interoperability between the different point solutions, replacing siloed information with a fluid exchange of data that can then be analyzed to reveal important insights regarding population health. This kind of deep integration can help health plans and employers eliminate many of the inefficiencies and frustrations that come with managing a hodge-podge of multiple disconnected vendors. 

In our next blog, we’ll discuss how Pager is Closing Healthcare’s Greatest Gap. 

At Pager, we believe addressing the high costs and multiple inefficiencies that define American healthcare today requires replacing a fragmented care delivery system with a seamless and connected consumer experience on a single platform. Discover how Pager can help your health plan lower costs and improve care by ending healthcare fragmentation. For the full story, click here: Closing Healthcare’s Greatest Gap: Replacing Today’s Fragmented Healthcare System with a Single-Source, Connected Consumer Experience.

Or contact us today for a free demo.

[1] Digital Health Apps balloon to more than 350,000 available on the market, according to Iqvia report. MobiHealthNews. (2021, August 4). Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/digital-health-apps-balloon-more-350000-available-market-according-iqvia-report

[2] Plescia, M. (2022, September 29). Employer point solution fatigue: How can health startups rise above? MedCity News. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from  https://medcitynews.com/2022/09/employer-point-solution-fatigue-how-can-health-startups-rise-above/

[3] Agasse, J. (n.d.). Half of consumers avoid seeking care because it's too difficult. Healthcare Finance News. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/half-consumers-avoid-seeking-care-because-its-too-difficult