Analytics in Healthcare and the Life Sciences: Strategies, Implementation Methods, and Best Practices

3. An Overview of Analytics in Healthcare Payers

Kyle Cheek

For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

—H. L. Mencken

Quantitative analytics have long been utilized by healthcare payer organizations, tracing back to the actuarial origins on which the payer industry is based. In spite of its quantitative origins, though, the deployment of analytics as a competitive driver beyond the traditional actuarial pricing function has been slow and uneven, even as healthcare payers have evolved from their traditional indemnity role to one of trusted health advocate—a transition that is inherently information-centric and demands a greater reliance on deeper analytics. Payers do generally recognize that there is latent ...