By Alan Goforth

As published in Benefits Pro, April 7, 2026

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Managing the complexity of multiple digital health vendors may cost employers as much as these services were designed to save.More than 40% of employers now manage eight or more digital health vendors, and 60% spend $2.5 million or more annually doing so, according to a new survey from Solera Health.

"We've seen large employers managing 20, 30, even 40-plus point solutions, each with its own contract, eligibility feed, payment model and quarterly review cycle," said Glenn Alphen, the company's chief commercial officer. "The Catch-22 is that every one of those programs was well-intentioned, but the cumulative complexity becomes so administratively burdensome that CFOs often dismantle the whole thing before it delivers value."

The survey results illustrate the growing burden for benefits teams:

• Nearly 80% of organizations report spending five or more hours each week managing digital health vendors. More than one-quarter spend 11 hours or more on activities such as reporting, employee communications and troubleshooting program issues.
• Many organizations have expanded their internal teams to keep up with the workload. Nearly 7 in 10 dedicate two or more full-time employees to manage benefits vendors, and more than 60% say the management burden has increased over the past three years.
• The complexity of managing multiple vendors is driving organizations to seek outside help. More than 70% now engage consultants, brokers or third-party administrators to navigate their digital health ecosystem. Three-quarters invest $100,000 or more annually in this advisory support.

Beyond the day-to-day workload, many organizations report challenges when launching new digital health programs. When managing multiple point-solution vendors, implementations take longer than expected about three-quarters of the time, often because of the complexity of integrations, data issues, security reviews and internal resource constraints. Delays often come with unbudgeted financial implications. Nearly 68% of organizations report incurring additional costs beyond contracted vendor fees, with many organizations facing six-figure unplanned expenses tied to implementation delays or unforeseen technical challenges.

When asked what would reduce the burden of managing multiple vendors, respondents most frequently cited better data integration and automated reporting, along with unified dashboards and simplified vendor relationships.

"Employers are spending six figures just to manage the vendors that were supposed to save them money," Alphen said. "That's not a staffing problem; it's an architecture problem. When digital health is delivered as a curated network instead of a stack of point solutions, you eliminate the complexity at the source rather than hiring more people to manage it."

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