Mindtree’s COPE Health investment has a differentiated value proposition

The Situation: On April 5, 2022, Mindtree announced a strategic investment in COPE Health Solutions, a consulting leader in value-based care and payment reforms through the power of analytics. The investment forges a partnership between Mindtree’s strong digital transformation and IT services and COPE Health Solutions’ analytics-enabled, value-based care expertise across all healthcare, including commercial health plans, Medicare, Medicaid, providers, and self-insured employers. This partnership is an end-to-end strategy–execution–maintenance construct that could make the Mindtree–COPE offerings more appealing to those looking to buy outcomes rather than services.

A strategic partnership helping craft a differentiated ecosystem

The state of healthcare in the US has perhaps never been as bad as it is currently across healthcare’s triple aim dimensions of cost, health outcomes, and experience of care. The growth rate for healthcare costs is twice the inflation rate and 70% faster than the consumer price index. Health outcomes are not improving; six people in 10 have a chronic condition, and life expectancy decreased one year over the last decade pre-pandemic. The notion of the experience of care for healthcare consumers does not really exist.

To change the trajectory across the triple aim dimensions, different parts of the healthcare ecosystem need to come together in more open and creative ways. The sentiment of transparency must translate into optimizing core capabilities without over-extending for commercial purposes.

Mindtree has been a leading technology services provider for more than two decades, with a growing presence in healthcare. While many of its peers have acquired or partnered with other technology players, Mindtree has chosen to specialize in partnering with COPE Health Solutions, which brings to bear 25 years of healthcare risk and financial experience. What adds the most heft to the partnership is COPE’s deep expertise in value-based care (VBC) when the pressure to move off fee-for-service (FFS) models to creative forms of VBC is strong both commercially and through government policy.

The Mindtree–COPE Health value proposition has the key attributes for partnering with health plans, health systems, and self-insured employers to begin meaningfully addressing some of the key challenges in US healthcare, concentrating on aligning incentives to health outcomes.

Collective effort to be transformative

The healthcare market has various VBC experts providing consulting services, platform services, or risk and audit services. In that context, the Mindtree–COPE collaboration is unique in that it can provide a strategy–execution–maintenance solution together in the box for any entity requiring VBC support. VBC is complex and risky, and it doesn’t quickly show results (potentially needing years). Therefore, its models require ongoing adjustments as demographics, regulations, and disease conditions evolve. COPE’s analytics-based platform, built on years of data and experience, combined with Mindtree’s technology services gives its clients a one-stop-shop to manage all their VBC needs.

The creative contracts this partnership can enable, such as outcome-based agreements, will give this partnership an edge. They could allow the Mindtree-COPE partnership to run a client’s VBC program end to end, provide consulting and platform services, help scale up a health plan’s primary care practice, design and build care management programs, or license its platform. The possibilities provide significant flexibility for health plans, provider-sponsored health plans (health systems), and self-insured employers.

This partnership adopts a proven three-pronged go-to-market strategy of “sell to,” “sell with,” and “sell through” to ensure all paths are traversed and optimal capabilities are brought to market, effectively resulting in a win-win-win situation for Mindtree, COPE, and their customers. Each go-to-market paradigm will address specific challenges, such as Mindtree selling its technology services to COPE and its customers while combining the partnership’s capabilities to sell to new and existing customers. The combination of both their market networks is an intrinsic force multiplier to expand coverage.

The Bottom Line: The complexity of challenges besieging the US healthcare system requires a collective effort to solve. Creative ecosystems that bring the right balance of expertise, experience, and enthusiasm will be critical to success.

The Mindtree–Cope partnership will be able to better connect the dots at their existing clients and approach new opportunities in a more holistic manner that will yield superior outcomes.