Healthcare providers have only one option in today’s digital economy: modernize.
Healthcare providers and life science companies face many challenges due to rising healthcare cost and the digitization of old ways.
In this article, we identify the three challenges that must be confronted by healthcare providers in the years to come.
Challenge 1: Rising healthcare costs and changing demographics
Healthcare expenditure grows perpetually faster than GDP—which means that industry spending has exceeded GDP growth ever since record-keeping began. Other than economic recessions, this can be attributed to insufficient public funding and constantly aging populations, as well as the varying adoption and penetration rates of clinical information systems, and changing healthcare buyer behavior that is dependent on a country’s healthcare structure.
Also related to the constant rise in costs is changing demographics. Life expectancy has changed in the past few decades, with 80-years now being the average in OECD countries. Since the average age is now higher, healthcare providers are faced with an increasing demand to treat patients with harder-to-treat chronic diseases.
Challenge 2: Digitization, modernization, and patient-centered care
Technological advancements and higher rates of adoption have clearly been transforming the entire healthcare industry. These advancements include wearable healthcare devices, patient-centered care, and digitization of the care giving process.
Patient-centered care brought increased access to retail care offerings by retail giants like CVS and Walgreens, thus putting increased pressure on traditional healthcare providers. Digitalization has also paved way for electronic health records (EHR) and value-based payments (VBP), which aims to promote the quality and value of healthcare services while shifting away from pure volume-based payment. This requires physicians to monitor not just the quantity of service they provide, but also the quality of the care in general , which among other criteria is measured by patient satisfaction and health improvement.
Challenge 3: Compliance with new healthcare regulations
When we talk about digitization and modernization, compliance with ever-changing regulations always comes up. The implementation of value-based payments, for one, is strictly connected to compliance with CMS’s Value-based Payment Modifier program, which not only interferes with a doctor’s already busy schedule, but also imposes a financial fine to them in case of noncompliance.
Other compliance burdens include government requirements and mandates, such as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. The law“repeals the sustainable growth rate (SGR) methodology for determining updates to the Medicare physician fee schedule,” and “establishes annual positive or flat fee updates for 10 years and institutes a two-track fee update beginning in 2019.” In other words, it brings forth changes in payment and reimbursement methods, funding, and addresses incentives for using health information technology by both physicians and providers.
Facing today’s healthcare challenges
Hospitals and life science companies must know how to effectively leverage IT enabled system automation and Big Data to respond to healthcare consumerism and transition to value-based payments. The right CRM solution can help healthcare institutions stay ahead of the competition by allowing them to transition to a fully digital operating model.
PositiveEdge has been helping healthcare companies through its customer-centric solutions. Our HealthcarePlus™ solution enables more effective customer-agent conversations by integrating a healthcare provider’s multiple systems and enabling interoperability. The tool provides agents with the right information at the right time for every customer, thus delivering a personalized level of care.
PositiveEdge HealthcarePlus™ is a smarter way of digitizing healthcare operations and helps healthcare institutions simplify their sales lifecycle, improve customer service operations, and make processes more efficient with automation.
Get in touch with us to learn how we can take your customer experience to the next level.