By:  Zahoor Elahi, Senior Vice President, Strategic Product Management, Optum

This is the final blog of our eight part series “Bending the Cost Curve with Comprehensive Sourcing.”

Once you’ve considered how comprehensive sourcing can maximize cost savings beyond traditional models, what do you do next? It’s time to make a five-point readiness plan based on your answers to these questions.

1. How does a comprehensive sourcing approach align with your organization’s vision? Organizations most likely to be successful are those that value collaboration and are focused on a holistic value proposition to do what is needed on behalf of their constituents.

2. If the vision aligns, who will most support the changes needed to maximize the benefits? It is important to engage the C-suite and their leadership across the organization willing to champion this model over the long term.

3. What information do those key supporters need to motivate their teams and drive momentum? People will have questions about their roles and the return on their investment in the process.

4. What departments may be most resistant to change and what will motivate them to make it happen – to all figuratively row in the same direction? There are thoughtful, proven ways to break down these barriers and create a matrixed effort even where silos are the norm.

5. How will you know comprehensive sourcing is successful? The more insights you have to verifiable individual department costs today, the more you can create a strategy to hone them as part of a total cost ownership approach.

Get alignment. Create the road map. Determine funding.

The answers to the five questions above can begin to help clarify what your journey will look like and the considerations that should drive your business case. But don’t think you have to do this alone. Work with a health-care-centric partner who can provide the solutions and guidance to confidently put together the pieces of your comprehensive outsourcing model.

At Optum, we partner with payers like you to provide the solutions and guidance to unlock your ideal cost-saving value drivers.  We are ready with the experience and resources to help you ask, answer and implement the strategy that can lead to breakthrough results.  Contact us today and learn more in the resources below.

Resources:

Read the Everest White Paper

Addressing Payer Costs through a Comprehensive Model: A Blueprint for Achieving Breakthrough Cost Savings

Watch Jimit Arora, Partner, Everest Group

Identifying the Most Optimal Sourcing Model from a TCO Perspective

View the Everest Infographic

Payers Can Save Up to 7x More through a Comprehensive Model

Connect with Optum to modernize your health care ecosystem

Catch up now on the articles you’ve missed in our “Bending the Cost Curve with Comprehensive Sourcing” series:

Part 1: A case for thinking big: Driving breakthrough cost savings 

Part 2: Beyond the back office: Why medical cost is so often overlooked

Part 3: Enabling success: The importance of IT infrastructure

Part 4: Beyond BPO: The next evolution to yield greater cost savings

Part 5: Reducing Total Cost of Ownership: Business intelligence is the differentiator

Part 6: Barriers to best-in-class: The case for articulating your full value

Part 7: Gaining traction: How to discuss comprehensive sourcing with stakeholders

Part 8: Achieve breakthrough cost savings: Five first steps

About the Author:

Zahoor Elahi, Senior Vice President, Strategic Product Management, Optum

Zahoor Elahi develops the company’s transformative, end-to-end health care IT and business process solutions. In his role, Zahoor leads thought leadership, ideation and product development using informed market- and client-centric strategic information and technology roadmaps. He is also responsible for ensuring the full suite of Optum products and solutions are optimized to maximize client value in the changing health care ecosystem.