The evolution of modern healthcare is moving at a breakneck pace, which can make it difficult to predict where you need to aim set your goals in the upcoming year. Recognizing important healthcare trends that are emerging, or that continue to grow, is important for ensuring the financial success of your healthcare entity. Here are 7 of the most important healthcare financial trends you need to know about for the near future.
Protecting Data
Big data isn’t going anywhere, as patients and doctors alike become more tech-savvy. Unfortunately, while paper records and data are easy to protect, secure, and dispose of, bits and bytes aren’t. Patient privacy needs to be top priority, particularly with the extensive data breeches you hear about on what seems like a monthly basis now.
Data security can often seem like an expensive undertaking, and to many financial officers, somewhat of a dark art. That being said, the repercussions of lackluster data security is worse. In addition to the public embarrassment and loss of trust in the provider, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations can be even more expensive to deal with.
Value Trumps Volume
The move to alternative payment models such as bundled payments and accountable care organizations means that value-minded care is becoming more important than volume-minded care. It is no longer appropriate to simply measure success by
By developing new healthcare cost systems and understanding clinical measures, you can determine the costs of achieving a unit of healthcare outcome, as well as the cost of quality. Once you understand these, you can then develop an automated cost system that can help you see costs for activities across all sectors underneath your umbrella. From there, you can prioritize where you can help teams to improve, and where you can make the greatest impact with the best return on investment.
Population Healthcare Management
It’s such a relatively new healthcare trend that we’re still struggling to get a concrete definition of it. Health Catalyst defines it as “A proactive application of strategies and interventions to defined cohorts of individuals across the continuum of healthcare delivery in an effort to maintain and/or improve the health of the individuals within the cohort at the lowest necessary cost.” It is a trend that will require you to consider how your organization practices medicine. Care models will need to shift to match the populations they serve. You can get ahead of this trend by:
- Getting comfortable with the fact that the line between payer and provider will blur, and being prepared for this.
- Learning the new terminology that comes with the shift in mindset. Beyond current patient risk stratification methods, you’ll need to get a solid idea of how to estimate your return on engagement, and how to allocate resources accordingly.
- Learn how to treat the population you are addressing, and how to take risks.
- Studying patient flow through your organization and identify bottlenecks. By seeing what areas lead to the greatest delays, you can reallocate existing resources or bring in additional resources to help the flow.
Technology Changes Engagement
How the individual healthcare patient interacts with doctors, nurses, and organizations has changed, and will continue to evolve. Wearable technology communicates directly to health care personnel from the users, and is becoming the key to engaging the younger generation.
You’ll need to prepare for this by understanding how different patient segments understand, use, and are comfortable with the available technology. By considering barriers to adoption, you can determine how to work with your patients to get the most out of wearables and other take-home technology. For instance, it’s estimated that one-third of wearable users stop use after six months of wear – consider how to move those users beyond that timetable.
Alternative Health Care Delivery Models
Accountable care organizations and retail space delivery have both changed for patients access health care. Walk-in health clinics like those found at Walgreens and Rite Aid allow for clinics to operate in areas that may not have space for large service providers. These alternative delivery models are helping to move dollars away from traditional providers, and into the hands of the providers that can utilize retail space and small footprints.
Partnership and Collaboration Becomes a Necessity
As many mergers and cooperative partnerships as there have been in recent times, they are most often out of necessity, not choice. Across the nations, smaller providers are banding together to provide population healthcare management. In some cases, it will be insurance providers joining up with health care systems and care networks. In other areas, some health providers have teamed up with community groups or even non-health care businesses to provide seamless care. Take a look at your marketing and contracting plan to see how consolidation may be affecting your contracting strategy.
Supply Chain Shake-Ups
With the raising of prescription drug prices and the continued aftershocks from the EpiPen price-hike scandal, it has become clear that prescription drug pricing is allowed to fluctuate more than it should be. Alex Azar, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, noted that drug prices are too high, in his first appearance in front of Congress. According to the AARP in their Public Policy Institute report, retail prices for prescription drugs commonly used by older adults generally rise at rates far beyond general inflation.
At the same point, the potential for online providers is something that can no longer be ignored. While it is still just supposition, even having ideas such as Amazon entering the pharmacy and healthcare industry is enough to raise worry. Their potential buying power would shatter the current model, with buying and pricing power that current providers would not be able to counter without consolidation.
Today’s healthcare financial trends are shaping the current market, and will mold the market for years to come. Don’t wait for them to come to you – you need to be proactive, and attack them sooner rather than later. It’s the best way to avoid shrinking margins now, and the potential for costlier and more urgent implementation at a later date.