As healthcare costs rise and workforce needs grow more complex, U.S. employers have embraced a flood of health benefit “point solutions”—specialized vendors that offer targeted services for mental health, musculoskeletal care, chronic disease management, fertility, telehealth, and more. The goal? To improve employee health outcomes while controlling spend.
But for many benefits leaders, this strategy has reached a breaking point. Managing a dozen or more vendors, each with its own contract, platform, and reporting system, has led to a very real and growing problem: vendor fatigue.
What Is Vendor Fatigue?
Vendor fatigue occurs when benefits teams become overwhelmed by the burden of managing too many siloed healthcare solutions. It’s not just about too many vendors — it’s about fragmentation, complexity, and diminishing returns.
Recent studies show:
- 50% of large employers now manage 10+ healthcare vendor relationships
- 41% say they have too many point solutions
- Only ~10% of employees use any given point solution consistently
- HR teams spend up to 1/3 of their time managing vendors and escalating issues
That’s time and energy diverted from strategic priorities — and worse, from the employee experience.
What’s Driving the Overload?
The surge in point solutions was well-intentioned. As employers like Walmart, Amazon, and Target began self-funding their health plans, they gained the freedom to plug in best-in-class solutions across various clinical domains. This meant adding tools like:
- Virtual care
- Mental health
- MSK condition treatment
- Diabetes and chronic care
- Fertility and maternity support
Each filled a gap. But each also introduced a new interface, a new data stream, a new vendor rep to manage, and a new portal for employees to forget how to use.
The Hidden Risks of Fragmentation
What began as innovation is now a maze. The downsides of this fractured approach include:
Administrative Overload
Managing implementation, security, legal reviews, employee engagement, and renewal cycles across 10+ vendors drains HR teams and benefit consultants alike.
Low Employee Engagement
Multiple portals and logins lead to poor usage. Employees are confused about where to go for what. Some never engage with key services because they don’t know they exist.
Disconnected Care
Point solutions often don’t share data. That means care is siloed — a diabetes coach might not know the member is also seeing a virtual therapist or in physical therapy.
Unclear ROI
With overlapping services and scattered analytics, it’s nearly impossible to know what’s working. Executives ask for impact, but benefit leaders are left guessing.
A decade ago, benefits leaders didn’t face a barrage of choices. With only a handful of point solutions on the market, the job was straightforward: choose a health plan, a PBM, maybe a virtual care partner, and call it done. Fast forward to today, and there’s a specialized solution for nearly every aspect of medical and pharmacy spend. The explosion of vendors—and the decisions that come with them—has become truly exhausting.
— Charlie Byrge, Senior Vice President of Revenue, Tendo
The Call for Simplicity and Integration
The emerging consensus? It’s time to simplify. HR teams and CFOs are now actively seeking solutions that consolidate multiple capabilities, integrate with their broader health strategy, and deliver a seamless experience for employees and administrators alike.
That’s where Tendo Care Connect comes in.
Reclaim Clarity with Tendo Care Connect
At Tendo, we recognize the toll vendor fatigue takes on employer healthcare strategy. That’s why we built Care Connect — a centralized platform designed to simplify, streamline, and elevate your employee healthcare ecosystem.
Tendo’s Care Connect helps employers:
Offer Shoppable, Transparent Healthcare
Enable employees to browse and book high-quality care with upfront bundled pricing across hundreds of procedures — from imaging to surgeries to preventive care. No hidden fees, no billing surprises.
Drive Smarter Provider Choices
Our robust provider quality ratings ensure your employees choose from top-performing clinicians. That translates to better outcomes and fewer complications.
Consolidate Payments and Billing
One platform. One payment pipeline. We handle the backend so your team doesn’t juggle multiple systems and vendors.
Empower Decision-Makers with Data
See what’s working. Identify top-utilized services, track savings, and monitor quality in real-time with unified analytics.
Elevate the Employee Experience
No more app fatigue. Just a single, intuitive interface guiding employees to the right care at the right time — with clarity and confidence.
A Future Without Fatigue
The next era of employer healthcare isn’t about adding more point solutions. It’s about connecting the pieces you already have — and letting go of what no longer serves your team or your workforce.
Tendo Care Connect offers the clarity, integration, and simplicity that today’s benefit leaders demand. Whether you’re streamlining high-volume procedures, ensuring access to high-quality care, or bringing financial predictability to your self-funded plan, we’re here to help you build a smarter, more sustainable healthcare experience.
Ready to simplify your benefits ecosystem?
Let’s talk about how Care Connect can help your organization reduce vendor fatigue and re-center your healthcare strategy on what matters most: better care at better value.
Contact us or learn more at tendo.com/care-connect
Ready to turn HEA 1004 into a strategic advantage?
Let’s talk about how Tendo Care Connect can help your organization lead the way.
