Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Healthcare Transformation - Accelerating out of the Pandemic
By Russ Richmond, CEO and Founder, Laudio
Healthcare faced unprecedented
challenges last year that will carry forward into 2021 and beyond. Overnight, the
pandemic environment foisted change on an industry that is slow to transition. As
we witness an acceleration in healthcare innovation and transformation that is
fueled by the pandemic, here are a few predictions to keep in mind for 2021.
Data,
everywhere: the advent of IOT and 5g means that
personal health sensors become ubiquitous in personal lives, ambulatory care,
and inpatient care. The cost of sensors
is going way down, microprocessor improvements mean they utilize less power and
can transmit data continuously, all bringing a new meaning to clinical
surveillance.
War in
the cloud: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Salesforce allocate more budget
to healthcare cloud and continue to jockey for position as the preeminent
platform for build. As the healthcare
sector continues to grow and become the largest segment of our services drive
the economy, every important player will need to have a significant stake to
stay relevant.
Healthcare
burnout explodes: the healthcare workforce will feel
the aftershocks of the pandemic long after the vaccine begins to be
administered - taking care of the workforce becomes a major theme, globally. No
one is beating pots and pans to celebrate the risk-taking of caregivers
anymore, yet the risks continue with nurses dying every week, families getting
infected, and the moral injury that accompanies witnessing lonely deaths.
Union
resurgence: unions, emboldened by the risks of the
front-line workforce in the pandemic, gain negotiating power. A Biden
administration will create a more conducive environment and new health systems
and facilities will need to acquiesce or fight hard.
Race
matters: the disproportionate health impact of the
pandemic on black and brown people will be used as an important evidence point
to expand healthcare benefits. It will
become a social justice issue. Dartmouth
Atlas-like efforts to map the impact of the pandemic will show that disparities
deepened, that survival was directly linked to zip-codes, and that our legacy
system structurally reinforced and deepened it.
Amazon
takes health: starting with testing and pharmacy, and
rapidly expanding to both telehealth and insurance, Amazon will get more than a
toehold in the biggest portion of the American economy. Amazon needs to disrupt health to continue
its torrid growth rate, and its distribution and logistics network means it can
provide care at home, in person when necessary, and perhaps all within the
convenience of a Prime bundle. CVS and
Walgreens will be in trouble after the historic vaccination surge subsides.
The
safety net expands and is super expensive: the
affordable care act will be upheld, and indeed expand via better federal and
state-level marketing of the programs.
However, costs do not decline, all stakeholders benefit and take more
profits. The "affordable" part of the
legislation will have to wait for a public option and other payor-side efforts
to be able to pass both chambers.
Epic
victory lap: Epic expands its dominance in EHR and
launches into the crosshairs of the feds looking at anti-competitive
behavior. Epic will expand its services
into other parts of the healthcare ecosystem and will be increasingly
vulnerable to claims that it does not play well with other vendors.
Annual
engagement surveys decline: the annual engagement
survey will continue to be too bulky and too infrequent, and enter its final,
gasping phase of relevance. Real-time
and continuous options will begin to be deployed that better serve all
stakeholders, and human resources groups will increasingly have the nuanced
understanding of their organization to make more nimble and impactful
decisions.
At home
is the place for care: at home, acute care services
will be launched by every major health system in the country. These will be delivered with better managed
and more highly skilled home health workers who become specialized in various
types of acute care. Costs will go down
and convenience will go up and there will be pressure to expand these
programs.
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About the
Author
Dr. Russ Richmond is CEO of Laudio, a
software company delivering critical infrastructure for the healthcare
workforce. Russ is a recognized healthcare entrepreneur with a vision to create
a platform that provides health system leadership teams and frontline managers
an integrated management system that fills the gap between information and
action. With Laudio, health systems dramatically improve employee engagement,
increase retention, and reduce burnout. The result is that leading health
systems such as Sharp, UNC Health, and Boston Medical Center use Laudio to save
millions annually and reduce turnover.