Dr. Rupal Malani

And that's where technology comes in.

The capabilities that are being offered by technology are accelerating at a pace that I think we've not seen before in this industry.

And providers are really taking advantage of this to drive consistency, accuracy, and speed.

The last piece I'll just point out is inorganic growth and revenue diversification are topics that we are talking a lot about with our clients.

Again, another way to drive the margin to enable investment in quality and outcomes and access.

There has been an uptick in deal activity in the past two years.

Now what's driving this?

A few things.

The first is the margin pressure that I talked about already.

You couple that with demand for multiple new capabilities that the industry and key stakeholders, whether payers, patients, communities, that they're demanding.

And each of those new capabilities requires substantial investment.

So think things like digital patient access, analytical capabilities, for example, to deliver effectively against value-based care models.

Think AI adoption and scaling.

And so the combined balance sheet of two systems coming together can better enable investment behind these modern capabilities.

And then the third big reason is there continues to be a strong belief amongst providers in the benefits of scale to both run core operations and shared services as efficiently as possible and to build financial strength.

Deals are much easier talked about,

We see many more conversations than consummated deals.

And in the journey, let's say, from the idea of scale to early discussions to progressing discussions and finally, you know, close and integration, there are multiple missteps that we see.

It's hard work.

But if you don't do the hard work after the deal closes to create the new organization, to realize the synergies you promised, to actually extract the value and invest behind the new capabilities that you were aiming to achieve with the deal, it really is difficult to deliver the value to patients and to employees.