IT strategy for health plans: Interview with ikaSystems CEO Joe Marabito
[audio mp3="http://website.guild.im/williams/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2014/08/hbdew0018a-david-e-williams-interviews-joe-marabito-ceo-of-ikasystems-1.mp3"][/audio]Health plans are investing in new information technology capabilities to meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act and to differentiate themselves from the competition. Slowly but surely they're moving from inflexible legacy, mainframe based systems to modular cloud based solutions that are more flexible and less expensive to maintain.In this podcast interview, ikaSystems CEO Joe Marabito and I discuss a variety of IT strategy issues that health plans are facing. I first met Joe years ago when he was an executive at Medco, and have always been impressed by his combination of deep subject matter expertise and an ability to explain things clearly to a broad audience.Topics for this interview include:
- The impact of the ACA rollout on health plan IT needs over the past year --since our last discussion
- The impact of delayed ICD-10 rollout
- The unique challenges facing Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care and commercial plans
- How Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are investing in health IT
- Where population health and big data fit into the mix
- Best practices of health plans that are staying ahead of the curve on capabilities, while also managing to tight budgets
- Where ika fits into the ecosystem and how its customers are positioning themselves in the market
- How ika has continued to evolve its offerings over the past year
—By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams of the Health Business Group