Navigant (NCI) Partners Lumere, Boosts Healthcare Segment

Navigant Consulting Inc. (NYSE:NCI) yesterday announced its partnership with Lumere to help healthcare service providers reduce healthcare expenditures by minimizing unnecessary utilization of drugs and medical devices. Based in Chicago, Lumere specializes in evidence-based solutions and services in clinical decision.

The partnership aims to deliver clinically driven, evidence-based, technology-enabled consulting solutions, thus helping healthcare providers reduce costs, standardize drugs and devices, and optimize the type and frequency of products based on patients’ condition.

Based on the research report by Navigant, U.S. hospitals can reduce their supply chain expenses by 17.8% without affecting quality. This will translate to annual savings of $23 billion or $9.9 million per hospital. Equal savings opportunities exist across multiple hospital characteristics, irrespective of their size or location. Navigant’s Healthcare supply chain practice works with several hospitals and health systems spread across the nation to re-arrange the policies of clinical care.

Healthcare Segment

Navigant’s Healthcare segment provides strategic, consulting, operational and performance improvement, business process managementand financial advisory services to hospitals and other healthcare providers, physician practice groups, payers and life sciences companies.

The segment accounts for almost 37-39% of the company’s total reported yearly revenues. Over the past two years, the segment recorded marked improvement. Revenues grew almost 28-29% from 2015 to 2017.

We believe the latest partnership withLumere is likely to enhance Navigant’s Healthcaresegment portfolio. Additionally, the company is developing data analytic tools across multiple groups to meet the growing demand for technology-enabled solutions that can help clients address most of the market challenges. Opportunities associated with healthcare reform continue to drive demand as the industry seeks expertise to improve profitability and tackle increasing regulatory pressure for compliance.

Zacks Rank & Price Performance

Currently, Navigant is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

A glimpse of the company’s price trend reveals that the stock has had an impressive run on the bourse in the last year. Shares of Navigant have returned 28.6%, outperforming the industry’s gain of 6.9%.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Business Services sector include Accenture pls (NYSE:ACN) , NV5 Global (NASDAQ:NVEE) , and Bureau Veritas S. A. BVRDF. All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

The long-term expected earnings per share growth rates for Accenture, NV5 Global and Bureau Veritas are 10%, 20% and 8%, respectively.

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