Healthcare: Challenges & Trends

Shifting Patient Profiles

• Aging populations in the U.S., Japan, Italy, the U.K., and other countries are expected to impact healthcare costs and strategies.
• The number of people diagnosed with chronic diseases (e.g., cancer, heart disease, stroke, chronic respiratory diseases) is increasing, due to aging population, sedentary lifestyles, rising obesity levels, changes in diet, and enhanced diagnostics.
• Developing nations are witnessing increasing rates of cancer and diabetes
• Increased international travel is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases and increasing the risk of pandemics.

Healthcare Consumerism

• As high-deductible plans force patients to pay for larger portions of their own healthcare, consumerism continues to grow as an important factor with patients taking ownership of their care and expenditures.
• Patients have become more demanding and engaged ‘consumers’, and the gap between their expectations and provider delivery is expected to grow as their expectations are shaped by the more advanced digital experiences outside healthcare (i.e. Amazon, Apple).
• Price and Quality Pressures – transparency like never before with the ability to find “information everywhere” is leading to the “engaged patient.” From the prices of drugs and hospitals to the clinical facts about conditions to the details about doctors and treatments shared on social media.

Medical Tourism

• Traveling abroad to seek medical treatment that is unavailable, costlier, or requires a prolonged waiting period, is one of the fastest growing trends in the industry, with many Western patients traveling to India, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries for affordable procedures performed by doctors trained at some of the world’s top teaching hospitals in Europe and the United States.

Cost of Care

• Genetically-engineered drugs are entering the market, and research breakthroughs are leading to major medical advancements with new targeted drug therapies. However, these therapies are 500-1,000% more expensive. From acquiring and managing the inventory, timely delivery and associated delivery – hospitals are looking for ways to manage the cost.

Care Delivery Models and Regulations

• Linking Patient Experience to the Bottom Line. Initiatives such as “pay for performance” and “patient-centered medical home” will further spur the self-care trends.
• Competing financial and clinical priorities. Increasing patient safety and quality requirements being driven through regulation while managing patient satisfaction expectations.
• Adjusting to healthcare cost pressures and reform, and transitioning to population health and value-based care models will continue to challenge providers for the next two to three years.
• Patients are becoming increasingly responsible for managing their own health. As a result, fast growth in home-based self-care and as well as self-monitoring technologies are exploding.

Telemedicine (or Telehealth)

• Telemedicine, or using electronic data and/or voice communications to support long distance healthcare, is gaining traction and about to grow significantly. The worldwide market for telehealth will grow 18.5% annually and expected to grow 56% in the US through 2018.
• By removing barriers of time, distance, and provider scarcities, telehealth can deliver important health services where they are needed most – especially in remote, rural areas and medically underserved urban communities.
• Telemedicine is proposed to be a vital approach for increasing access to care, improving the quality of care that lead to better patient outcomes, and ultimately reducing the per capita cost of care.

Staff Shortages

• Increased shortages in trained clinical staff with the situation worsening. Across the nations (urban and rural), one in seven RN, Pharmacist and Imaging/Radiology Tech positions are currently unfilled.
• Nursing shortages are more critical than ever before – especially in advanced nursing and licensed practical nurses. With heightened restrictions on resident hours, the major strategy to increase physician productivity and contain hospital costs.
• The vast majority of the advanced practice nurse (APNR) are ‘baby boomers’ and are rapidly approaching a large retirement exodus, but the incoming workforce lacks the professional confidence and experience
• Increased patient load and higher-level acuity places increased stress on the staff that cares for them and the hospital for the expensive cost of care

Hospital Consolidations

• With pressure to contain costs while simultaneously delivering higher-quality care, hospitals have been and will continue to consolidate at an unprecedented rate.
• Acquisition of physician groups and ambulatory care facilities provides a larger community reach (population health) and availability of alternative revenue to the traditional high priced under reimbursed acute care setting.
• As mergers and strategic alliance formations continue, the hospital gains more bargaining power with health insurers creating a more balanced playing field.
• Declining inpatient census as care moves from hospital to ambulatory care setting creating a need for hospitals to explore how they provide care to the communities they serve.

Technology Integration and Data Analytics

• Technology can better leverage available clinical resources to reduce costs while increasing access, improving quality and driving patient satisfaction, and in the process, transform traditional healthcare delivery.
• Cost pressures and regulations continue to drive hospitals to integrate digital, real-time business applications that will bring sweeping change to the way healthcare is delivered.
• Hospitals look to create an agile and secure IT infrastructure that can respond to disrupters such as mergers and acquisitions, security breaches and action by competition.
• Post-EHR, the need to optimize workflows and systems without disrupting the healing process.
• Post-EHR, clinical analytics is a top priority. New surges of IT innovation will demand groundbreaking real-time and predictive analytics.
• Increased positive patient identification is no longer isolated to patient safety. Patient identification/ matching throughout various provider and payor IT systems has created complications that extend well into the revenue cycle.
• Supply chain costs are the second highest operating expense in the hospital, thus creating technology integration opportunities within the healthcare market where it was previously deemed too expensive.
• As the overall cost of technology decreases, and the value has been proven in non-healthcare markets, opportunities for tracking the location, management, maintenance, and utilization of expensive assets and supplies, patients and clinicians for optimization of workflows and maximizing resources are sought after.