Despite industry uncertainty about the fate of healthcare under the new administration and Republican Congress, health system leaders move ahead and are preparing for the future. A recent Premier Inc. survey show the target areas for improvements within their systems. The results signal growth concerns and why the leaders will not wait for Capitol Hill results.
“In this period of great uncertainty and concern, healthcare leaders are understandably focused on managing costs,” said Mike Alkire, chief operating officer of Premier. “They are also clearly working hard to make sense of all the data they have, most of which remains in silos.”
In priority order, health system leaders move ahead and are focusing on:
- Managing costs, with a focus on drug spending
- Moving from meaningful use to meaningful insights
- Engaging and satisfying consumers
- Shifting toward population health, risk and scale
- Continuing differentiation on quality and costs
“In this period of great uncertainty and concern,” said Mike Alkire, chief operating officer of Premier.
Breaking down the key findings:
- Managing costs, with focus on drug spending
- 65 percent will increase controlling cost of care management efforts.
- 61 percent will increase the management of rising pharmaceutical spend.
- Moving from meaningful use to meaningful insight: Health systems are moving beyond recording data in electronic health records toward integrating and combining data to streamline analytics on supply chain, financial and clinical care for evidence-based decision-making.
- 53 percent will increase a push to integrate data into analytics.
- 50 percent will increase efforts to improve interoperability of existing health technology.
- 47 percent will increase utilization of technology to support risk-based contracts.
- Engaging and satisfying consumers: With high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts, consumers will increasingly choose economical, accessible healthcare options.
- 56 percent will increase patient access to clinicians through telehealth.
- 45 percent will increase investments in patient engagement initiatives.
- Shifting toward population health, risk and scale: After being championed for years by the last administration, the shift toward value-based care continues to be an important strategic focus for hospitals and health systems.
- 45 percent will increase expansion of post-acute care services through partnerships.
- 40 percent indicate will increase use of expanded healthcare team structures to includecare coordinators, clinical pharmacists, nurse practitioners and other healthcare extenders.
- Continuing differentiation on clinical quality and costs: Health systems continue to pay attention to quality reporting and management.
- 46 percent will increase quality reporting systems for clinicians for public payers (i.e. MIPS).
- 36 percent will increase quality reporting systems for commercial payers.
