When Custom Solutions Become Outdated and Limit Innovation

Newsroom, Thought Leadership

Now, more than ever, state health and human services agencies need IT solutions that offer both flexibility and ongoing support. What worked ten, five, or even one year ago may not work for tomorrow’s challenges, especially in today’s era of significant policy change, rapid digital transformation, and evolving citizen expectations. Without the ability to quickly adapt systems, states risk both falling behind and falling out of compliance. 

Whether proprietary or open-source, IT solutions that rely on significant customization can pose major hurdles for states trying to keep up. These highly customized systems often become complex and rigid, making it difficult to quickly adapt to market and policy changes. They also tend to be unique and tied to specific vendor-curated ecosystems, limiting states’ ability to collaborate or choose new partners as they pursue compliance and innovation. As such, these solutions run a high risk of becoming outdated and ineffective, especially with big changes on the horizon, including expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits and H.R. 1 (the One Big, Beautiful Bill).  

The Hidden Costs of Customization 

Extensive customization can turn a once-promising IT platform into a system that’s difficult and costly to maintain. What starts as a solution tailored to a state’s needs can quickly become locked in time – hard to upgrade, expensive to modernize, and slow to adapt to new requirements. Here’s why: 

  • Barriers to Change: Custom code can increase the effort, time, and cost required to make system changes and enhancements. If your state has a highly unique system, then updates, bug fixes, and improvements made elsewhere (by the vendor or community) may not apply, and new features and third-party tools may not be compatible. As such, each change can require extensive state development, customization, and testing to ensure functionality. 
  • Vendor-Controlled Ecosystems: Significant customization often makes a solution dependent not just on the original vendor but also on a specific, limited network of system-compatible tools and partners – and this tends to be true for both proprietary and open-source solutions. In effect, this can limit the options your state has in terms of modernization and compliance initiatives and partners. 
  • Limited State Collaboration: The more unique your solution becomes, the less it will have in common with other state solutions. Any issues experienced could therefore be unique to your system. This can make it difficult to know if the insights and experiences of other states apply to your solution, and even more difficult to apply and benefit from those insights and experiences. 

In short, while customization may seem appealing at first, it often leads to higher costs, more headaches, less support, and fewer opportunities for innovation down the road. 

What States Really Need in 2025 and Beyond 

Looking to the future, the most effective IT systems for state health and human services agencies will be those that empower states to respond quickly to new requirements, foster collaboration and innovation, and avoid the pitfalls of rigid customization or vendor lock-in. Here’s what to look for – and why these features matter: 

  1. Configurability Over Custom Code: Configurable solutions allow states to easily adapt to new policies and requirements without risky, expensive code rewrites or customizations. The more configurable a solution is, the more easily it adapts – without the danger of becoming so unique that future changes are difficult. 
  2. Choice of Vendors and Partners: With new tools and innovations coming out in the IT world every day, states need the flexibility to adopt new technologies as they become available and relevant. States should seek vendors who offer flexibility in partner choice and platforms that don’t lock agencies into a single ecosystem. 
  3. Rapid Policy Response: For the best long-term value, states should seek IT vendors who guarantee ongoing compliance and tie payment to contract performance. With such an approach, policy changes are reflected quickly in IT platforms. There is no need for agencies to wait for a full rebuild, create solutions independently, or find workarounds to changes that don’t quite fit.  
  4. Continuous Improvement: A modern IT solution should never stand still. With a solution that offers regular updates based on real client feedback and emerging policy trends, states can consistently benefit from planned enhancements and new features – without waiting for lengthy custom development cycles. This ensures the system stays current, effective, and ready for whatever comes next. 
  5. Centralized, Collaborative Innovation: A platform that incorporates input from many clients and agency experts across the country offers advantages in terms of innovation. States can benefit from and build on each other’s insights, rather than working in silos. This is especially useful when navigating policy changes that come with limited guidance and stand to greatly impact state communities. 

When new federal subsidies from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) became available, Vimo updated eligibility calculations and consumer tools within just weeks, enabling residents to access ARPA subsidies quickly, without hassle. We delivered these updates to all our state exchange partners in one release. This was made possible by our proprietary, configurable SaaS platform and close collaboration with our state partners. 

Building Resilience in a Changing Policy Landscape 

In today’s rapidly changing environment, it’s important to avoid the trap of extensively customized solutions that can quickly become legacy systems: rigid, costly, and hard to update. Instead, states should choose a solution that is highly configurable, adaptable, and comes with comprehensive, ongoing support – ensuring both long-term compliance and dependable service quality, no matter what the future holds. 

At Vimo, we’ve taken this to heart, especially as policy changes have increased over the past year. Drawing on years of experience supporting state-based health exchanges and other agency IT solutions, our teams have been working hard to prepare our clients for the upcoming shifts. This includes consulting with our health exchange clients on consumer messaging about changing plan costs as well as developing solutions designed to support Medicaid community engagement (work) requirements and reporting. Our goal is to ensure every state we partner with is ready for what’s next – so your programs and the people you serve never miss a beat. 

Ready to future-proof your program? Reach out to chat about how we can help you stay ahead of policy changes and maintain compliance.   

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