It's safe to say that data analytics are transforming every industry. The more data that an organization can glean actionable insight from, the more room there is for making improvements. Such is the case with insurance. With massive amounts of data collected on a daily basis, the business opportunities that are available after sorting and analyzing that data are even greater. It's a practice that many carriers are adopting for a variety of benefits, but most notably, to drive down costs.

Today, companies are using data analytics to proactively implement tactics to improve business processes rather than reacting to problems after they happen. Since data sets are more granular, easier to access and integrated with many other business systems, businesses are able to be much more strategic in their tactical implementation than ever before. With medical spend in particular, analytics allow payers to look at more detailed data sets to identify costs by unit, procedure code or provider type, to name a few. By categorizing medical spend, key cost drivers are more clear and corrective solutions, such as ancillary network services to manage specific types of medical services, can be put in place to reduce spend in those areas.

Ancillary networks encompassing supplemental coverage areas outside of general care, such as diagnostic services, durable medical equipment or physical therapy, are not groundbreaking advancements in the insurance industry. They've been used to reduce medical spend for quite some time; however, in the past few years there has been a noticeable increase in adoption. Payers are more frequently incorporating ancillary network services into their cost containment programs and as a result of new tools and technologies, making them easier to deploy. Another noticeable change in the use of ancillary network services is the growing focus on strategy, thanks to more sophisticated analytics initiatives. Payers are more accurately identifying key cost drivers and therefore, strategically determining which services are most appropriate for delivering overall business benefits.