Management consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in April 2017 announced findings by its Transformational Health team that suggest that analytics adoption among U.S. healthcare payers and providers is not consistent, and that some health systems might utilize advanced enterprise data processing architecture to derive patient-specific insight for every episode of care.

Healthcare analytics is widely considered as the key enabler of value-based care, and robust use of analytics allows health systems to practice data-driven decision making, which improves operational efficiencies, eliminates preventable costs, and streamlines clinical effectiveness.

As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) compels more health systems to attribute higher net revenue to patient outcomes, analytics investment tied to population health management (PHM) will be a priority over the next five years.

The new analysis from their Digital Health Growth Partnership Service defines best practices in terms of design, deployment, and governance of clinical, financial, and operational data analytics solutions by payers and providers in the U.S.. While the need for both platform-based offerings (built in with PHM, EHR-electronic health records, RCM-revenue cycle management and CDSS-clinical decision support systems) and modular analytics solutions will intensify, vendor selection will remain tedious since the U.S. healthcare analytics market is highly fragmented.

Major market participants include Health Catalyst, IBM Watson Health, Cerner, athenahealth, Arcadia, Medicity, Tableau, ZeOmega, and SCIO Health Analytics, which leverage predictive analytics to support visionary innovations in precision care.

According to Frost & Sullivan, care providers will be most receptive to use healthcare data analytics to identify, assess and benchmark cost trends by payer, patient and physician mix, whereas payers are likely to opt for these solutions to identify quality-adjusted and evidence-based target prices for every episode of care. On the vendor side, specialty-specific solutions will gain prominence among providers striving to benchmark chronic conditions at a population level. Both traditional and non-traditional players will continue to identify, assess, and collaborate with ecosystem partners to cater to the evolving market needs.