By BRIAN KLEPPER

It seems inevitable that, in the near future, an innovative health care organization – Let’s call it The Platform – is going to seize the market opportunity of broader value. It will cobble together the pieces, and demonstrate to organizational purchasers that it consistently delivers better health outcomes at significantly lower cost than previously has been available.

To manage risk and drive performance, The Platform will embrace the best healthcare management lessons of the past decades: risk identification through data monitoring and analytics, driving the right care, quality management, care navigation and coordination, patient engagement, shared decision-making, and other mission-critical health care management approaches. It will practice care that is grounded in data and science, and is outcomes-accountable.

But The Platform will also appreciate that a few specialty vendors have developed deep expertise in dealing with clinical or financial risk in high value niches – where health care’s money is – like management of musculoskeletal care, chronic disease, maternity, surgeries, high performing providers, or specialty drugs. It will understand that it often makes sense to partner with experts who can prove and guarantee high performance rather than trying to learn to achieve high performance within each niche. The Platform also will realize that simplicity is a virtue, and that bundling specialized services under one organizational umbrella is easier for health plan sponsors to manage and for patients to negotiate than an array of individual arrangements.