As published on Fierce Healthcare
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By Cailey Gleeson

For many employers, digital health vendor management is creating both operational and administrative costs that potentially rival the savings that these programs are meant to provide, according to a new report.

Solera Health surveyed 106 U.S.-based senior benefits leaders in mid-, large and major enterprises across various sectors, including healthcare. Forty-two percent of surveyed employers in the April 2026 report say they manage eight or more digital health vendors, and 90% report spending more than $1 million annually on costs.

“Employers are spending six figures just to manage the vendors that were supposed to save them money,” said Glenn Alphen, Solera Health chief commercial officer, in a statement. “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.”

According to the report, the estimated median cost of managing digital health vendors is $580,000 on top of annual digital health benefits budgets. “And as spending grows, the burden doesn’t flatten—it accelerates,” researchers wrote.

Sixty percent of organizations report that vendor management burdens have increased over the past three years, with 80% of benefits teams spending five or more hours per week on maintaining vendors. And 75% of respondents report that their organizations have two or more dedicated full-time employees for vendor management, and 81% have requested additional support.

For organizations needing extra support, 72% report using outside consultants, brokers or third-party administrators and 60% of organizations spending $500,000 or more on external consultants still intervene on issues weekly or more.

Moreover, 81% of respondents report other digital health benefit initiatives being impacted by implementation delays—69% report impact to “multiple initiatives simultaneously.”

When asked about an ideal vendor implementation experience, here’s what respondents told Solera:

• Pre-integrated with major human resources information systems/electronic health record systems: 39%
• Guaranteed 90-day or less timeline with financial penalty: 32%
• Clear change management and communication support: 31%
• Vendor handling all IT integration: 29%
• Dedicated implementation team that is not shared: 28%
• Technical assessment prior to contract signature: 27%

“Vendor sprawl isn’t just an operational headache—it’s becoming a strategic liability that erodes executive confidence, breeds team fatigue and blocks innovation,” the report said.

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