TEANECK, N.J., Sept. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) today announced that it has been named a global Leader and Star Performer in healthcare payer IT outsourcing by Everest Group, an advisory and research firm on global services.

Everest Group evaluated 15 global healthcare payer IT service providers in the recently released report 'IT Outsourcing in Healthcare Payer Industry -- Service Provider Landscape with PEAK Matrix™ Assessment and Profile Compendium 2013'.

Cognizant was named a Leader, the highest rating according to Everest Group's PEAK Matrix™ framework, on the basis of overall market success and delivery capability. While market success was based upon annualized contract value, delivery capability was measured by the ability to deliver services successfully along the four sub-dimensions of scale, scope, domain investments, and delivery footprint. Cognizant was also awarded the Star Performer rating based on year-on-year movement on the PEAK Matrix™ and top performance in both market success and capability advancement.

According to Everest Group, Leaders have a larger scale along with broader and deeper client relationships, higher technology capability and investment in tools and platforms, and wider delivery footprint and global delivery presence. "Cognizant positioned itself as a global Leader in the payer ITO services showing strong growth even on a large revenue base," the report stated. "Cognizant strengthened its Leadership position by investing significantly in its payer ITO talent base, adding new clients, and scale during the year." It added, "Cognizant has one of the most extensive large-deal portfolios as well as the highest annual growth rate in the payer ITO segment."

"The healthcare industry has witnessed rapid adoption of consulting, IT and business process services in the recent years as a result of regulatory reform, consumerization of healthcare, market consolidation, and emergence of new technologies," said Jimit Arora, Vice President of Everest Group. "Cognizant is among a handful of service providers catering to the global market that have achieved success with large-sized, multi-year service contracts. Cognizant has not only continued to maintain its position as a Leader, but also substantially enhanced its capabilities and thought leadership to drive innovation and be a Star Performer. Cognizant's growth underscores the strong preference that payers have shown for service providers with large and balanced portfolio of offerings."

"This recognition by Everest Group underscores Cognizant's distinctive ability to enable payer organizations to address long-term secular shifts in the business, regulatory and technology environments," said Krish Venkat, Executive Vice President of Cognizant's Healthcare and Life Sciences practice. "We are increasingly helping payers to not just run better by driving efficiencies across the value chain, but also run different by engaging more effectively with consumers and launching newer products and services to support membership growth in an industry that is fundamentally shifting towards consumerism.

"Transformative priorities such as Health Insurance Exchanges, health and wellness initiatives, support for the dual-eligible population, and accountable care are at the forefront of our customers' agenda. With a comprehensive portfolio of consulting solutions, insight-driven analytics, and business process and IT implementation services, Cognizant helps payers turn these challenges into opportunities for strategic differentiation by anticipating not just how they will evolve, but also how developments across other industry segments will affect their business models. By further enabling payers to build new capabilities on the back of social, mobility, analytics and cloud technology architectures, Cognizant enables them to improve quality of care, enhance customer engagement, optimize operations and processes, and rationalize administrative as well as medical costs," Krish Venkat added.

About Cognizant's Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice

Cognizant's Healthcare and Life Sciences practice is committed to helping change millions of lives for the better by partnering with clients to build solutions to healthcare challenges, continually improve the way they do business, set the pace in clinical development, strengthen their regulatory infrastructure, and increase competitiveness. Consistently ranked among the top 10 on the Healthcare Informatics Top 100, Cognizant serves 27 of the top 30 global pharmaceutical companies, 15 of the top 20 health plans in the U.S., 5 of the top 6 pharmacy benefit management companies in the U.S., 9 of the top 10 biotech companies, and 12 of the top 20 medical device companies. With a large team of dedicated professionals including doctors, pharmacologists, physicians, biomedical engineers, pharmacists, biostatisticians, medical writers, and GxP consultants, the practice provides domain-aligned consulting, IT, business process and analytics solutions globally.

About Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world's leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 164,300 employees as of June 30, 2013, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes statements which may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which are necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied include general economic conditions and the factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cognizant undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

SOURCE Cognizant