Most procurement processes start with a familiar question: Which vendor has the best solution?
It's a fair place to start. But there's a bigger one worth asking first.
How do you want your healthcare system to work?
For employers, consultants, and benefits advisors, procurement isn't just about picking vendors. It's about designing the system employees will live in for years. The choices you make now decide how people access care, how services connect, where financial risk sits, and whether your investment actually improves health outcomes.
Those decisions tend to outlast the contracts themselves.
"Procurement is one of the few moments where organizations get to redesign how care works, not just who delivers it," says Will Houtart, Director of Business Development at Maple. "Start with the vendor instead of the system you're trying to build, and you'll optimize individual services while missing the bigger picture."
Procurement decisions shape the care experience
Healthcare benefits have gotten complicated.
Most organizations now offer some mix of virtual care, mental health support, employee assistance programs, specialty care, pharmacy services, and wellness programs. Any one of these can perform well on its own. But when they're procured as separate solutions instead of parts of one system, employees end up doing the work of connecting the experience themselves.
Your employees won't see how procurement decisions were made. But they feel the results every time they need care.
Can they find the right entry point? Can they easily access their records to inform their practitioners? Are referrals seamless? Do they get ongoing support, or start from scratch every time they open a new app?
Those experiences are shaped long before anyone books an appointment.
Start with the operating model, not the RFP
Before you evaluate a single vendor, step back and define what "good" looks like.
A few questions are worth more than any feature comparison:
- How should employees access care?
- When should care escalate from one service to another?
- Which services need to share information?
- What service levels are non-negotiable?
- What outcomes will define success?
- Where should financial risk sit between you and your vendors?
These are system design decisions. Vendor selection should serve them, not shape them.
The goal isn't to assemble a portfolio of healthcare vendors. It's to build a healthcare system that feels connected to employees, so they're not left coordinating care across disconnected services on their own.
"The strongest procurement processes start by defining the operating model," Will says. "Once you know how you want care to flow, it becomes much easier to find partners that fit your strategy."
Small contract choices, big long-term impact
At enterprise scale, procurement is more than pricing.
Contract structure, accountability, performance guarantees, and incentives all shape long-term value. Small differences in any of these areas add up over the life of a multi-year agreement.
A few moves that pay off:
- Consolidate vendors to simplify the employee experience and cut administrative complexity.
- Bundle complementary services to improve continuity of care.
- Introduce shared-risk or outcomes-based agreements so incentives line up around results.
None of this is visible to your employees. What they notice is whether care feels connected. They spend less time navigating between services, repeating information or wondering where to go next, and more time getting the care they need. That's what thoughtful procurement should deliver.
Optimize the system, not the parts
It's easy to evaluate vendors in isolation. Every proposal makes its own case with its own metrics.
The problem: your employees don't experience healthcare in isolated programs. They experience your entire system.
A vendor that looks great on its own can create friction if it doesn't fit the rest of your benefits ecosystem. And a solution with a shorter feature list can deliver more value if it slots cleanly into your operating model.
This isn't just about procuring excellent services. It's about building a connected care system where those services work exceptionally well together. When procurement gets this right, employees aren't left wondering how one provider connects to another or who to see next. The system does that work for them.
The chance to build something lasting
Every procurement cycle is a chance to redesign how healthcare works for your people.
Organizations that treat procurement strategically aren't just negotiating contracts. They're building the infrastructure that will shape employee experience, operational efficiency, and financial performance for years.
"Start with the question, 'What kind of healthcare system are we trying to build?'" Will says. "Get clear on that, and the right procurement decisions — including who the best vendor is — follow a lot more naturally."
That's what we build at Maple. A connected care system for plan members, so your people don't have to piece their healthcare experience together on their own.
Treat procurement as system design instead of a purchasing exercise, and you're set up to build something that keeps delivering for your people and your organization.