In the dawn of a new decade, health systems are faced with a looming question: to self-disrupt or be disrupted? The answer should be an unequivocal and proactive answer of self-disruption. Rather than waiting around and daring competitors to leap even further ahead, health systems must self-disrupt with digital to ensure that they can remain viable and relevant to the broad base of consumers they seek to serve.
Health systems need to act now with greater urgency because they’re being unbundled and attacked by insurgents. This scenario is happening in every other industry as well; S&P 500 data and Fortune 500 data show that there’s been a wholesale rotation of old guard entities for new entrants and insurgents. Today, health systems, in particular, are being squeezed on all sides. On one side, new entrants are making access to care more convenient for consumers through virtual points of care access. On the other side, specialty services are picking off high-margin service lines and patients. Health systems can’t afford to do nothing. They must figure out how to incorporate digital today to remain competitive.
Health systems have to go big — this is not a time for half measures. Incremental moves are not sufficient. It comes down to investment, and health systems today are wildly under-investing in digital. Systems spent a lot of money on EMR enablement, which has been foundational but is not sufficient. The task at hand is to use that foundation to really leverage digital, to start taking costs out of the system, improve patient care, improve quality, redesign workflow, and substitute capital for labor. Systems that don’t act in full measures now will run the risk of being disrupted by incrementally improving themselves to obscurity.
The case for change is already in the bottom line. Margins have declined by more than 40% in the past three years. But aside from the financial motives for change, there’s also a moral imperative. Consumers have been educated. We want ease and experience. The current healthcare experience is hard and challenging and scary – for everyone. There is a human cost to getting this wrong. We have to address this cost and get better at both the hard things, like continuity of care, transitions in care, siloing of care, and the basic things, like online scheduling.
Looking at the laundry list of things that health systems absolutely need to get right in the pursuit of remaining competitive, it comes down to this:
1) Improve the consumer experience. This is indisputable.
2) Make the clinician experience better; burnout levels are at epidemic levels.
3) Eliminate waste and reduce costs to become more efficient, especially around administrative burden, which accounts for as much as 25% of a health system’s expenditures.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
With all this in mind, 2020 will be the year we’ll see more health systems doubling down on the first area: improving the consumer experience to build deeper patient engagement and loyalty to drive growth and protect market share. To do this, health systems must open up their digital front doors. This means creating a new standard for digital experiences, one that includes meaningful interactions and easy transactions between providers and patients. A fully integrated, transaction-ready digital front door relies on seven capabilities: Provider Directory, Provider Search, Transparency, Consumer Scheduling, Triage, Care Navigation, Virtual Visits. These are fundamental digital levers; when connected seamlessly to one another, they can have a significant impact on patient volume, market share, wallet share, and total revenue. Any health system that is looking to remain competitive should look no further than the digital front door for their first assignment of 2020.
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