There is a fundamental issue facing operations in many businesses. Data is great, but only when it’s useful. In healthcare operations, gigabytes of drug pricing data can be useful, but it requires time to sift through it and expertise to know what you’re looking for. 

One of the most ubiquitous ways to handle all this data is to plug it into a dashboard that helps managers oversee operations, extrapolate performance, and see where things aren’t working.

The problem is businesses are reaching critical mass when it comes to SaaS. Not unlike streaming subscriptions that go unused, businesses are wasting real money on once-shiny dashboards that promised every insight under the sun. Welcome to the age of SaaS bloat. 

SaaS is better than pen and paper, but half a dozen dashboards creates other bandwidth problems. This issue is perhaps no more evident than in healthcare, where half of physicians spend time on admin and burnout is higher than it was a decade ago.

But what about AI? Good technology that helps with tasks is great, but systemic complexity remains a problem. 

Reintroducing the Power of Infrastructure: Highways That Connect Operations 

Since it’s becoming increasingly clear that SaaS can only solve a handful of problems at a time, what’s a better approach? Infrastructure: carefully planned and automated monitoring and processes that link multiple workflows and operates behind the scenes to improve on a systemic level. 

One of the most impactful areas where we’ve seen the power of infrastructure emerge triumphant is pharmacy cost management. This is a uniquely complex and interconnected set of processes throughout care delivery that impact drug costs for providers, patients, and payers. 

Drug cost management is complex, moves quickly, and involves multiple partners. It’s the perfect example of an unavoidably important operation that requires a more comprehensive solution, i.e., infrastructure, not just a dashboard to monitor losses and errors. 

There are a few different approaches to managing pharmacy costs, and core to it all is a process called claims adjudication. As we’ve outlined in detail in a previous article, adjudication takes many forms and happens at different stages throughout care delivery. 

The earlier it can happen, the more impact it can have on managing drug costs. This is precisely the moment where infrastructure and dashboards converge in capabilities. 

A dashboard-based solution shows what has happened. Action still needs to be taken. 

Infrastructure actively monitors what is happening. It can prompt pauses through automated alerts. This enables the next person in the chain of custody to make corrections or changes that result in a better outcome, for example, drug prices or payer details confirmed.

In a 2024 study, healthcare systems implemented advanced BI tools with data integration across clinical, administrative, and financial systems. Cleveland Clinic reportedly reduced “unnecessary tests,” streamlined workflows, and achieved savings in the order of $150 million annually by reducing waste. This is just one example where dashboards alone in complex operations (like healthcare) are insufficient. 

Why VistaRx Prioritizes Infrastructure Over Dashboard-Based Solutions 

This vital distinction is what creates the backbone of VistaRx’s approach to building solutions that enable proactive, zero-intervention cost management. 

We design infrastructure for pharmacy cost management that works for skilled nursing, LTC pharmacies, specialty providers, and payers. Instead of a glossy dashboard showing your team errors they need to fix, our solutions act in real-time to prevent errors before they become real costs and burdens. 

Healthcare organizations cannot afford to slow down every month to count their losses. Our solutions make sure that doesn’t happen. 

Clean Bill, for example, is an integration that works with PointClickCare to keep pharmacy costs down for SNFs. It operates similarly to an antivirus on a computer, protecting against billing errors that can result in costly discrepancies for SNFs when payer information isn’t up to date. 

Just like an antivirus, less news is better. No alerts, no messages? Everything is working great, and your SNF is being billed accurately according to resident coverage. 

At any time, our users can pull reports from our solutions to see the progress that’s been made (real dollar savings). This is the opposite of dashboard-based solutions that show you work that needs to be done. 

In post-acute care, we don’t have the time or resources to add more to our plate. This approach (infrastructure) fixes that. 

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