Health Information Technology

Health Information Technology In the United States, there are currently approximately 645,000 practicing physicians, 5,500 hospitals, 12,500 nursing homes, 8,000 home health care agencies and 4,500 independent laboratories. Add to this mix hundreds of managed care/insurance organizations and ancillary (usually local) health care providers. Combined, insurers and caregivers alike employ literally thousands of disparate technologies that waste tremendous financial and human resources.

Health care is an extremely complex business. Literally, errors can be life-threatening. Until recently, affordable technologies capable of replacing wasteful, but comparatively safe administrative practices were not available. Health economists estimate that 20% or more of the nation's total health care expenditures is spent on backroom administration, consuming approximately $300 billion per year. Another 10% funds the fallout of adverse health events that are caused by inaccurate or unavailable patient information. Consider that insurers typically must invest annually 10-12% of gross premiums in administration, not including member acquisition costs. Add to it the 20%-50% of gross billings that a typical physician practice spends on administration. The cumulative effect is that, more than 4% of our nation's annual economic output is being consumed to administer a financing and transactions industry that pleases no one, and angers many. Therein lies the great opportunity. Efficiencies from clinical error and administrative waste can enable the funding of extremely worthwhile pursuits such as balancing public and private health care budgets, clinical innovations and substantially increasing corporate profits. Not to mention the hugely positive fiscal, operating, and psychological effects on physicians, hospitals and insurers. Many health care technology innovators, backed by a return of willing venture capital, have recently established new ventures in the administrative cost reduction arena. In addition, well-established health care technology players have invested heavily in new products and services to tackle the systemic inefficiencies in health care financing and delivery.

Agilence has built deep experience in assisting health care technology players to fuel growth initiatives with sales, talent and timely product advice. Agilence has created a practice dedicated to work collaboratively with health care technology organizations to:

• Recruit top governance and executive talent
• Pilot programs/product implementation in field
• Sales, product placement & distribution joint ventures
• Establish effective pricing strategies
• Competitive knowledge transfer and analysis
• Capital placement and advisory
• Scale and manage rapid growth
• Just-in-time interim management