Health Care Insights helps us make predictions and trends to watch in 2020
In 2020 "consumerization across the healthcare industry will continue in full force, with both start-ups and established commercial entities pushing into primary and urgent care to provide high-quality, convenient and low-cost healthcare."
Fred Pennic, HIT Consultant, surveyed several healthcare industry executives at the end of 2019 and asked them to share their predictions and trends for 2020.
Here are key trends to watch in 2020:
"Price transparency will dominate the healthcare industry next year" and we expect to see "more attention around the importance of the consumer (patient) experience and the notion that healthcare should become a shoppable, consumer-facing service. This shift will put pressure on providers to manage costs and predictability, and to figure out how to differentiate in a market where the patient will want more choice upfront. It will also put pressure on payers to better coordinate the entire patient experience, from end-to-end.” says Robbie Hughes, Founder, and CEO, Lumeon.
Other trends and takeaways from industry leaders include:
Patient Access, Acquisition and Outcomes - patient focused care will lead the way. Patients and providers will focus on how to measure outcomes in a standard way.
Mental Health Care - awareness will be an important focus for our country.
Information - in its many forms will drive care. Data blocking and health data exchange will be a focus, as well as improving data quality and the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in medicine. And the collection of data on the social determinants of health will grow and help shape how care is provided in communities across the nation. Data acquisition and data access will make data exchange possible.
Disasters - helping to assist with hurricanes & climate disasters and the displaced populations and environmental health impacts. Protectors of patient health records will be influenced by disasters in 2020.
Technology - for "systems under pressure to perform" and tech that takes advantage of new innovations with cloud, mobile, and machine learning", and to help reduce physician fatigue and impacts patients experience will be valuable. Technology will "help accelerate healthcare's transformation by enabling seamless and secure data sharing, from the patient to the provider to the payer." Hot health care tech topics in 2020 will include: Mobile Medicine, The Cloud, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), Wearables and Genomics.
New Regulations - Employers will be integral to Healthcare in 2020. “Employers believe they can have a greater influence over their employees’ wellness and health than an insurance company or a healthcare organization. They will be incentivized to keep employees healthy and productive over a longer period as they’ll assume the financial risk and have to pay employees’ medical claims and associated fees. 2019 saw a lot of regulatory proposal drafts, and 2020 should be the year in when we get some finality on regulations like information blocking. Also, increased scrutiny on fraud, waste, and abuse will "affect real change."
Costs - "As a country, we’re expected to spend about $1.3 trillion for hospital care this year. With an average profit margin of 8%, hospitals have higher margins than the pharmacy or insurance industries. Patients are bearing the brunt of these rising costs and as a result, crowdsourcing sites have seen an influx of patients requiring help to pay their medical bills. Some patients are even avoiding the U.S. medical system altogether as demonstrated by higher numbers of medical tourism to countries that provide cheaper access to surgeries and other procedures."
Retail Clinics - “Smaller clinics in convenient locations will improve access to care for patients, but quality remains uncertain.” "The thousands of retail clinics now providing patient care as a result of players like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart entering the healthcare market will improve care for millions of patients, who can now go across the street for easy access to basic healthcare services. To keep up with higher patient expectations around the speed of access and convenience that consumerized access to care brings with it, providers across the board will turn to new solutions and partnerships to increase access and convenience, upping their game and retain the patients they risk losing to consumerized care."
Interoperability - where “patients receive care across multiple venues, and their secure data exchange is key to providing continuity of care. Technology will support connected care from personal health devices to major databases that will need to be connected.” "In 2020, look for major players like Apple and Google to make strides toward interoperability and breaking down data silos. Apple’s Health app already is capable of populating with information from other apps on your phone, and they’re uniquely positioned to be the driver of interoperability. They have a secure and established platform, trustworthy for the passage of encrypted data (such as patient portals), and command a brand loyalty ubiquitous in the United States and elsewhere, not to mention pre-established relationships with the hospitals that are critical to making any true strides in that direction. It’s a position that Apple has deliberately cultivated: as smartphone innovation falls into a stalemate, they’re reaching toward bigger horizons — in Tim Cook’s words, improving health will be “Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind.”
Outpatient Experiences - and data will drive the improvement of out-patient services, reduce hospital readmission and improve continuity of care.
Physician Engagement - hospitals struggle to address physician burnout, “especially around technology and EMR usage.” Physicians view charting and responding to queries as a burdensome administrative task. Tech to make it faster and easier for physicians to respond and chart is a logical step toward addressing burnout.
Price Transparency - "A large focus in 2020 will be on billing departments’ ability to code bills correctly the first time, closing out patients’ cases quickly. With the lack of communication between doctors and coders, billing has been a long and sometimes painful process. This will be a large initiative by hospitals to streamline and open the doors of communication."
To read more about Pennic’s survey see the full article CLICK HERE
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Source: https://hitconsultant.net/2019/12/31/executive-insights-top-healthcare-predictions-trends-to-watch-in-2020/