Lapping up management of health and diseases April 18, 2017 As the tide of transformation in the insurance industry makes its way across geographies and business lines, it not only floods the field’s core players with uncertainty, but it also affects business models in auxiliary ventures affiliated with insurance. One important auxiliary area consists of enterprises that engage in the management of medical insurance claims. Called third-party administrators or TPAs, enterprises in this specialty services industry bundle the handling of medical claims for a variety of payers – insurers, mutual healthcare mutual schemes and self-insured organizations or corporations. The TPA business model historically has added value to insurance by providing a layer of efficiency through managerial skills and bargaining power vis-à-vis healthcare providers due to the economies of scale involved. While many insurers locally and regionally might run their medical claims department under the title of TPA, the role of genuine “third-party” organization that is independently serving numerous payers has for more than two decades most strongly associated in Lebanon with the TPA GlobeMed (formerly MedNet).