Last month, UnitedHealthcare launched a virtual-first health plan followed by similar announcements from Cigna, Aetna, and Centene.

The world’s leading brands are increasingly steering their marketing, advertising, and development budgets toward digital experiences. As every company becomes a digital-first company, a rapidly growing market opportunity has emerged to help companies deliver the most engaging customer experiences by providing integrated, comprehensive solutions and complimentary services. In no other industry is the shift in how companies interact with their customers more transformative or urgent than in Healthcare.

Demand for next-gen Customer Experience (CX) is explosive in pharma, payer, and provider:

Pharma and Life Sciences:

Digital transformation in pharma and life sciences is rapidly accelerating. As the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down all forms of face-to-face interaction across the globe, physician practices closed their doors to nearly all pharma sales reps. 58% of physicians surveyed reported interest in increased utilization of digital tools to interact with sales reps, suggesting the change in the role of the rep and the way they interact is here to stay. The old sales channel of pharma rep to physician and physician to patient has been disrupted and displaced by more direct to patient interactions driving acquisition, adherence, and retention. New physician and patient behaviors are building muscle memory, cementing the increased importance of digital promotions and engagement.
Payer:

Health plans could save $16.3b per year by automating administration, a savings opportunity greater than any other healthcare segment. Simultaneously, consumerism in healthcare is putting pressure on payers to provide retail-quality customer experiences. Payer opportunities are numerous and diverse, including product development & administration, member engagement, network and care management, and risk & compliance.

Provider:

The Covid-19 Pandemic has further applied pressures to all areas of the healthcare system, with acute impacts felt by hospitals. Hospitals and health systems must leverage AI to free clinicians from complex administrative tasks so that they can spend more time on direct patient care. 43% of healthcare executives ranked automating business processes, such as customer service, as their first choice for investment in AI technology. The rise of healthcare consumerism and increased competition from commercial providers has added greater urgency to hospitals’ desire to improve patient access and patient engagement.

Summary:

Enterprises recognize that customers have more choices and lower switching costs than ever before. In this new digital environment, it is the customer experience that differentiates brands and ultimately determines customer loyalty. The reach and quality of experiences directly impact success. Delivering the best experience to a customer at a given moment requires the right combination of data, insights, and interface across multiple channels in real time. To deliver these multi-channel experiences that are personalized to every customer an organization must excel at a unique confluence of creative and technical competencies imbued with a culture of empathy and innovation.

However, complex and cumbersome legacy administrative systems slow the adoption of digital technologies. In order to effectively engage customers through frictionless experiences on the front-end, back-end systems must be integrated and automated. Healthcare organizations are investing to more efficiently and effectively manage, measure, and monetize their operating assets with intelligent automation of end-to-end workflows. This sentiment is captured by Ashok Chennuru, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Anthem saying, “It is essential for healthcare organizations to understand how to automate processes by reimagining them. That’s where AI can help. The ‘digital-first, AI-first, insights-driven organization’ mindset needs to be incorporated into every business unit of the enterprise with a focus on automation.”

The healthcare organizations across pharma, payer, and provider that will succeed in the future frontier will be supported by robust with vendors and service providers that modernize back-end systems leveraging data science and automation in cloud environments to power intuitively designed customer experiences. As the health systems that work with our former client Ivy Ventures, that was acquired by Centauri Health Solutions, a portfolio company of ABRY Partners, patients and physicians are just like everyone else – they move through the path of least resistance.

Notable industry transactions & insights into the Healthcare space.

TTEC Holdings, Inc. Acquired Avtex

• Bounteous, a leading insights-driven digital experience consultancy, received an investment from New Mountain Capital, a growth-oriented investment firm with over $30 billion in assets under management. The partnership will support strategic investments in talent, new service offerings, and the co-innovation enablement methods that Bounteous uses to drive clients’ digital transformation programs. This transaction further exemplifies the demand for improving the customer experience in highly regulated and change-resistant industries such as Healthcare and Life Sciences.

MediStreams Received an Investment from TT Capital Partners

• MediStreams, a leading provider of remittance, reconciliation, and payment automation revenue cycle management solutions for healthcare providers, received a growth equity investment from TT Capital Partners (“TTCP”), a leading healthcare private equity investor, to fuel ongoing business momentum. Founded in 2009, MediStreams has grown quickly with investments by the founders and angel investors and is well-positioned for continued success.

Relatient, Inc. Merged with Radix Health 

• Relatient, Inc., the leading SaaS-based, patient engagement platform, merged with Radix Health while also raising $100+ million of additional growth equity capital from its existing investor, Brighton Park Capital and its affiliates. Through the merger, Relatient adds Radix Health’s suite of cutting-edge, enterprise-grade patient access solutions to its existing platform to continue to optimize provider schedules, increase patient satisfaction, and improve outcomes for healthcare organizations.

Streamline Health Solutions, Inc. Acquired Avelead Consulting, LLC

• Streamline Health Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: STRM) (“Streamline”) provider of the eValuator™ Revenue Integrity Program which helps healthcare providers proactively address revenue leakage and compliance exposure, acquired Avelead Consulting, LLC (“Avelead”), a recognized leader in providing solutions and services to improve revenue integrity for healthcare providers nationwide. Avelead’s SaaS cloud-based platform provides hospitals and health systems with solutions focused on key areas of the revenue cycle: patient financial services, revenue integrity, revenue optimization, and cost savings.

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