Unlocking the Healthcare Data Dilemma

Unlocking the Data Dilemma Across Healthcare

Over the past month, I have met with executive leaders from a diverse set of enterprises. 

• Employer. Benefits leadership at a Fortune 50 retailer. The enterprise has a national footprint and a benefits plan population of well over 100,000 people.
• Health Provider. Senior leadership of a health system comprised of over twenty hospitals, multiple research institutes that produce award-winning academic research, and tens of thousands of clinical staff.
• Employee Assistance Program. Vice President of Operations at a leading point solution that provides services to hundreds of thousands of plan members across hundreds of clients.  

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For each of the following statements, guess which executive said it.

• “We have sophisticated analysts on staff. They are all highly paid. However, that team is underutilized because we cannot provide them easy access to our data.”
• “I know what type of data we need to answer that question. I just have no idea where to find it. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have the resources to clean and integrate it.”
• “We want to focus on outcomes for the people we serve. I’ve spent the last two days arguing with [a prominent industry vendor] about data formats.”  

The first quote was from an executive at the employer. The second quote was from an executive at the health system. The third quote was from the VP of Operations at the point solution.

Does the source for each quote really matter, though? All three quotes express the same idea.

Data is a problem.

It does not matter if you are an employer that purchases healthcare, a program that engages directly with employers to provide service, or one of the leading health systems in America. You are struggling to get control of data that you need to run your business, and to realize your vision and mission.

Many people observe that American healthcare appears to be in crisis. It makes sense why a crisis exists. Every category of enterprise in the industry is dealing, unsuccessfully, with the same fundamental problem.

Healthcare is a data-intensive industry in a data-intensive economy. Still, nobody has the data they need to function properly. Therefore, they don’t function properly.

Abett aspires to help fix this problem.

Today, most of Abett’s clients are large employers that use the Lockbox to manage data flowing across the benefits plan. However, a few of our clients are point solutions that use their Lockboxes to manage across their employer clients. One Abett client is a large health system. While those enterprises are different from each other, the configurations of their Lockboxes are close to identical.

At first, that similarity surprised us. Upon reflection, it makes sense that a single approach would work across the industry, because the same fundamental problem plagues the industry.

As I further reflect on what we have learned from our clients – mostly employers, but also point solutions and even a health system – it becomes clear that they share an important characteristic.

They believe these data problems are solvable.

Abett’s clients are aggressive in trying to solve these problems. In contrast, many other enterprises acknowledge the problems exist, but accept them as inevitable.

Our clients’ experiences highlight how that defeatist belief is misplaced. Our clients are solving these problems, and doing so quickly. The benefits are proving to be more meaningful than we imagined. We are deeply thankful for our clients’ partnership, and we are excited to share their stories with others. If you have interest in learning more, please just let us know. Reach out to our team here.

Mike

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