From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the months following, healthcare saw incredible innovation and transformation. The public health emergency pushed healthcare leaders to implement change and try new services quickly so they could continue caring for their communities and team members amid uncertainty.
It’s important for organizations to continue to embrace innovation. While it’s reasonable for some pre-COVID processes to return because of their importance in ensuring safety and quality of care, it would be a disservice to our patients and customers to revert to old industry norms. Our healthcare system still has much to improve upon. There are clear structural problems made apparent by poor health outcomes, persistent inequities, lack of digital coordination, rising costs and overwhelming waste.
At PwC, we believe a connected health ecosystem is an efficient model to move healthcare in the right direction. A connected health ecosystem brings all stakeholders together in support of shared goals that embrace innovation.
Some healthcare leaders are already taking steps in this direction. According to PwC models, the industry is in the midst of a five-year, $1 trillion shift in revenues away from traditional payers and providers. There will likely be increasing pressure on payers and providers to find their footing in this evolving ecosystem — or risk losing market share to competitors.
At PwC, we identified key areas that are expected to be pivotal to the connected health ecosystem and shape healthcare in 2022 and beyond:
- Embrace cloud and digital. Cloud and digital technologies will play an essential role in the new healthcare ecosystem. The cloud is an enabler of business transformation because it helps connect systems, data, devices and emerging technologies, allowing healthcare organizations to deliver capabilities and innovate more quickly. At the same time, regulators are pushing for interoperability, requiring leaders to ensure they’re building integration within existing systems.
- Build consumer trust. The need to protect consumers’ health information from cyber attacks is paramount as the industry expands its digital footprint. The occurrence of these attacks — and a history of them — can significantly erode trust. Additionally, consumers are accustomed to easy-to-use technology solutions. There are opportunities to offer patients intuitive apps and tools that create digital connections with healthcare teams. Health organizations that don’t provide these options risk being left behind.
- Invest in intelligent technology for the workforce. Even before the pandemic, staffing shortages and burnout were challenges for the industry. COVID-19 has made these conditions much worse, and there’s no easy fix. Leaders should consider new workforce strategies that help ensure fair and flexible policies complemented by intelligent technology to enhance existing staff and business processes. Other considerations are cross-organizational programs that provide workforce skills and knowledge as well as competitive compensation packages.
- Ready for value-based care 2.0. While value-based care stalled during COVID, we believe it is still driving competitive advantage within healthcare ecosystems. Disruption in technology, new government regulations and the ongoing affordability crisis are setting the stage for renewed focus on the goals of value-based care, delivering on outcomes that mattered most. The time is right for the next generation of value-based care, dubbed VBC 2.0. In addition to defining patient groups, identifying measures of success and building an economy with greater transparency, health system stakeholders will need to establish data standards and consider how to better demonstrate value and outcomes with consumers.
In addition to these areas of focus, PwC’s Next in Health Services report identifies other critical concepts that will shape the future of healthcare. Access the full Next in Health Services report here.
Tune into PwC for a continuation of this series, where my colleagues at PwC dive deeper into the tenets of the emerging healthcare ecosystem and how stakeholders can prepare.
