With apologies to Robert Zemeckis, Outliers is heading back to the future.
Near the turn of the millennium—Sept. 27, 1999, to be exact—Modern Healthcare reporters, editors and a few guest experts did their own time travel and predicted what the industry would look like in 2020.
Let’s see what the wannabe Doc Browns got right.
Dr. Don Berwick had some bold predictions around patient care:
“Control of care decisions will shift dramatically from professionals to patients and their families.”
“The flow of inpatient care will be smooth and continual, with less waiting and fewer delays.”
“The 2020 healthcare system will affect quality of care profoundly. Greater use of the evidence base for medical care will reduce the overuse of ineffective procedures and the underuse of effective ones.”
“The year is 2020, and the Internet has changed everything. From homes to doctors’ offices and from hospitals to consumer health cooperatives, web technology has powered the pinpoint delivery of medical information to the places it can do the most good.”
—Modern Healthcare reporter
“There will be exquisitely sensitive and inexpensive genetic tests that will provide people with blueprints
of the DNA.”
—Modern Healthcare reporter
From Stanley Hupfeld, president and CEO of Integris Health from 1995 to 2010:
“Much of the diagnostics will be miniaturized and available in the consumer market.”
“… so that by 20 years after the turn of the century most of the marginal operations will be gone and all hospitals will be in regional systems with a tremendous amount of consolidation.”
“A lot of specialty facilities already exist … we’ll see a wider spectrum, including transplant and orthopedic facilities. They will be government-sanctioned, based on medical outcomes, service and economic performance standards.”
“Employed individuals will be given a fixed sum of money with which to purchase health plans that meet their own healthcare requirements and budgetary constraints.”
—Modern Healthcare reporter
“The information revolution will lead
to a rise in consumerism, and that will, in effect, police the market.”
—Former Federal Trade Commission official Mark Horoschak
Futurist Ian Morrison didn’t so much predict what the industry would look like in 2020 as he homed on in on “five big challenges that healthcare leaders must meet.”
- Medicare reform: Could Medicare be the platform for a conversation on universal coverage? “Don’t hold your breath,” Morrison wrote. Instead, he predicted that battle lines would be drawn over drug coverage in Medicare.
- E-health and consumerism: Investors ponied up to support nascent online services—such as WebMD and Dr. Koop—and Morrison predicted that would “shake up healthcare by empowering consumers with information.” But he worried that it could also lead to a new clinical condition: cyberchondria.
- Care redesign: The delivery system would need a makeover, he said, to “best utilize technology, especially the Internet.”
- Physician leadership: Morrison had some tough talk for docs who were “joining unions” and going the retail/concierge route: “Stop whining and step up and tell us what medicine in 2020 ought to look like.”
- Drugs and innovation: The industry and policymakers will have to take on drug coverage and costs, but not to the point where they “kill off the pharmaceutical industry.”
