Healthcare is perhaps one of the largest and most complex industries. Healthcare organizations hire third parties to assist in several business functions:
- Broker Compensation,
- Sales & Underwriting Systems,
- Provider Management,
- Plan Sponsor Administration,
- Electronic Enrollment,
- Membership,
- Billing,
- Claims Processing,
- Medical Management and
- Pharmacy Benefit Management.
Outsourcing service provides also partner with their customers to enable their IT systems to deal with initiatives such as self service portals (member / provider / broker), consumer-driven healthcare, behavioral health, Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) and healthcare data warehousing and analytics.
The HITECH Act in the U.S. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 establishes new standards for healthcare information technology to promote electronic health records. As healthcare IT evolves, service providers will play an important role in the management of healthcare services and in healthcare administration.