As many companies enlist brokers to help them filter vendors,it's ultimately the broker who needs to be responsible for thecompanies and products he or she recommends, as well as theirimpact on plan design and the company's bottom line.

The challenge is particularly acute in today's population healthand wellness space, given the sheer number ofoptions available—from complete, integrated platforms to programs on everything from sleep management tomindfulness, to the breadth of mobile health and biometricdevices.

Making a decision based on “imperfect” information (aka,marketing collaterals) or on backward-looking data (claims dataversus wellness data) can lead to very expensive mistakes.

Investing in a failed program or initiative that can't be easily“unwound” will exact a steep price, and quite possibly souremployees on other initiatives going forward.

To avoid these mistakes, the first step is to establishmeaningful evaluation criteria that can—and should—be applied toall vendors, holding them all to a single, universal standard.

This begins with a set of best practices in assuring thesecurity, quality and privacy of personalhealth data, and the ability to measure outcomes and productivitydata, which gives you a valid, objective idea of what's working andwhat's not.

These are the top five items and performance criteria you shouldalways considere when evaluating vendors before and during theengagement:

1. Security

There are several critical security standards vendors mustfollow, including HITRUST, SOC 2, PCI, and ISO 27001. Ifcertification is not available, then evidence of policies,enforcements, and third-party security scanning should be madeavailable upon request. Personally identifiable information shouldonly be sent through a secure channel.

Sending Social Security numbers and other patient data throughunsecured channels allows unauthorized access to it, which can leadto identify theft. It is the vendor's responsibility to ensure thesecurity of the information; you should regularly monitor that theyare consistently using secure channels.

2. Data quality

By this, we mean accuracy, completeness, validity, integrity,and duplication. These criteria should be enforced at the memberregistration, operation, reports and billing phases.

Vendors should deploy a reliable method to validate memberregistration in the health and wellness program, and crossreference it with a valid data source for eligibility. The oldadage “garbage in, garbage out” applies, as vendors need to be heldaccountable for data quality since inaccurate information willinvariably lead to faulty conclusions and bad decisions.

3. Privacy

Transparency in dealing with members' privacy is essential inmember engagement. Members should know who can see their data,where the data is going and how it's being used.

Additionally, they should be able to opt out from certain items(such as outreach efforts and extended personal data capture).Also, it is essential to ensure that vendors are HIPAA compliantand have the ability to notify the affected parties when aviolation occurs.

4. Program effectiveness

At the outset of every engagement, the vendor and customer mustestablish mutually agreed upon criteria for program effectiveness(participating levels, health outcome change, sustained engagement,medical spend, etc.). It is a collaborative approach leading to asuccessful engagement. Once these criteria are set, the automationand analysis of the data must be in place.

Ideally, the analysis is conducted by a neutral platform thatgenerates objective effectiveness data, rather than relying onvendors who have an interest in reporting certain results; thislets you hold vendors accountable to performance metrics that youlay out and thar are most meaningful to you.

5. Technology

How well and reliably your underlying technology performs is anessential part of evaluating a wellness initiative. To determinethe performance of the actual technology, the following should beconsidered: implementation, member and manager satisfaction, systemuptime, scalability, security, and quality.

Other considerations ought to include the speed at which data ismoved within the system and the efficiency/accuracy of theautomation.

The lingering uncertainties in today's health and wellnessmarket, coupled with the need for patient-centric solutions thatmake health care more manageable and cost-effective, place brokersin an ever-more-critical advisory role. Organizations need to relyon brokers to make informed decisions, think strategically, andimplement practical solutions with the flexibility to supportgrowth—and adapt to change.

To the extent that health and wellness is technology-driven,brokers will need to bring a systematic approach in evaluating theefficacy of the solutions they recommend.

It's important to bear in mind that it's one thing to haveevaluation criteria in place, but quite another to continuouslymonitor vendor performance, which is a challenge.

Systematic monitoring—and scoring—can be done by implementing amore expansive population health framework that functions much likea health operating system (OS) that centralizes all of thecomponent technologies, where performance criteria can be preset,and reports generated on-demand for real-time visibility into eachapp or technology.

Such a framework should give brokers and their clients theability to see what's working, what's not, and to make changeson-the-fly to improve performance and, most importantly,demonstrable health outcomes.

Platform technology and vendor integrity are critical tostrategy execution. Top brokers provide—at a minimum—expertise invendor selection.

Equipped with the ability to continuously refine and improvehealth and wellness delivery, these brokers have a significantadvantage in helping clients navigate the complex health andwellness marketplace, offering them stability and flexibility whiledriving innovation and results.