In its 2015 annual listing of the Top 100 healthcare information technology companies , Healthcare Informatics magazine placed Cognizant at number 5. Cognizant had ranked sixth in 2014. Cognizant’s ranking marks the 14th consecutive year the company has appeared on the list.
Every year Healthcare Informatics ranks the 100 vendors with the highest revenues derived from healthcare IT products and services earned in the U.S. based on revenue information from the previous year.
Krish Venkat, President of Healthcare and Life Sciences at Cognizant, says “What Cognizant is trying to do is obviously synchronize to where we believe the industry is heading, and where the various participants in the healthcare ecosystem are making their moves.” He adds “When you look at changes in the Affordable Care Act, they’re forcing many changes: the lines are blurring between payers and providers; a lot of consolidation is occurring; a lot of providers are taking on more risk to fully become health systems; and there’s a lot of consolidation on the payer side as well.”
Venkat says that while Cognizant was already all in, in terms of the provision of IT services for health insurers, “one of the things we didn’t have in our repertoire, as late as last year—one aspect we see emerging, and we didn’t have the full suite of product offerings—when we look at large and small customers and those in between, we look at the challenges we have in terms of what is imposed on them under the ACA [Affordable Care Act], in terms of the administrative costs and medical loss ratios. And many health plans are operating with dated technologies—and they have a smaller footprint, and want to have the support of somebody with a much larger challenge.”
Going forward, Venkat sees two very broad areas of opportunity for the company. “One area is with provider organizations, as they take on greater risk and develop accountable care and population health initiatives,” he says. “Population health is certainly one area where we’ve developed a solution, and we’re integrating that with the TriZetto platform.” The other broad area of opportunity, he says, is in what he calls “consumerism”—the broad range of health plan member engagement possibilities around “improving consumers’ ability to select plans,” and to better manage their interactions with health plans.