Study: Many payers plan no new IT investments in '08

Liking the IT options you're getting from your payer? Well, you'd better. A new study suggests that more than half of payers may not be making new investments in 2008, instead of hunkering down to look at their portfolio and see what they'll need to do to meet emerging challenges like pricing transparency, quality data collection, Web-based claims adjudication and privacy protections for shared data. The study, conducted by Health Industry Insights, drew these conclusions after surveying 79 percent of the largest and most active of U.S. healthcare payers.

Researchers found that while transparency is a big priority, players aren't sure how to address the issue yet, so many are taking a wait-and-see attitude for the next year or so. Still, 19 percent of payers implemented real-time adjudication in 2007. Thirty-five percent said that they're implementing online real-time claims adjudication now, and 18 percent plan to implement such technology in 2009.

To learn more about payer plans:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece

Related Articles:
Consumers support health data exchange. Report
Physicians rate insurers on claims payments. Report
Study ranks TX. payer performance. Report

Post a comment