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Healthcare’s next act: More connections, stronger relationships

Covid-19 made an already challenging healthcare system even harder to navigate. If we want the industry to come back stronger than before, then we must ask ourselves, “What is healthcare’s next act?” 

Like everyone else, I’ve spent the last nine months watching a generation-defining event unfold around us. The coronavirus has affected everyone in different ways, and it’s prompted me to think carefully about what this moment means for the industry and broader healthcare ecosystem.

Covid-19 laid bare how fragile our healthcare ecosystem is. The decline in patient visits during the pandemic translated almost immediately into a cash-flow crisis, which we saw on the athenahealth network with aggregate declines in appointments of 40-50% across specialties. With overall revenues decreasing, many practices had to manage day to day, unsure of whether they would ever be able to reopen their doors. Covid-19 made an already challenging healthcare system even harder to navigate, for patients and providers alike. If we want the industry to come back stronger than before, then we must ask ourselves, “What is healthcare’s next act?” 

To have a truly thriving healthcare ecosystem, we have to increase the number of connections between participants. Those connections — between doctors and patients, practices and payers, primary care and specialty care, acute care, and ambulatory care, and so many more — are the lifeblood of a thriving ecosystem. That’s why we must make it easy for new participants to join. And we have to make those connections easy to activate. With a healthcare ecosystem that is densely connected, open, and highly utilized, we will be able to realize the following three outcomes: 

Access to the right information at the right time and place

According to a study conducted by athenahealth and epocrates, 95% of clinicians across the industry have had difficulty delivering care because they couldn’t access patient records. A more densely connected ecosystem reduces friction in delivering care for both patients and providers by ensuring everyone has access to the right information and the right expertise at exactly the right time and place.

Throughout the healthcare community, we need to use all of the intelligence of a connected ecosystem to ensure that patients are matched with the best provider for their specific circumstance. This will provide more transparent insights into physician availability and suitability for a particular patient. Networks can and should be more transparent so that providers know that the specialist they’re referring patients to offers care that is high-quality and low-cost, in addition to being in-network. 

No healthcare worker should have to spend their precious time hunting for that information — it should be present at the point of care. In fact, the whole transaction — identifying the right consult, and scheduling the follow-up visit — should happen while patients are right there with their doctors. A densely connected ecosystem makes fee-for-service economics a little less brittle by enabling performance insights and supporting growth.

High quality care for all 

There are two primary ways in which increasing the density of connections improves quality for all. First, the more information that flows between participants, the greater the visibility into patterns of care and usage that help us tailor approaches to the specific needs of specific populations. Second, dense connections enable the creation of a holistic patient and provider story. 

According to athenahealth research, Black patients miss 13% of their appointments, and Hispanic/Latino patients miss 10%, compared with about 5% of white patients. Identifying patterns like these can help us all create more tailored patient outreach solutions. For example, sending patient appointment reminders via text message is especially useful for Black and Hispanic/Latino patients as our analysis has shown they are more likely than white patients to sign-up for this channel. 

Unfortunately, fragmented care happens all too often within healthcare, resulting in a disconnect between providers and patients. Creating a densely connected ecosystem will give us richer insights at both the population- and individual-level and bridge the traditional gaps within the healthcare ecosystem to ensure high-quality care for all patients. 

Sustainable economics

Finally, a more densely connected ecosystem contributes to sustainable economics. Covid-19 has underscored the vulnerabilities of having a single dominant payment model in healthcare. Despite the fact that we have been discussing the “shift to value-based care” for the better part of two decades, our industry remains locked in a fee-for-volume model. We’ve made tweaks at the margins, but when volumes disappear, the system can’t survive in its current form. 

A densely connected ecosystem is a prerequisite for the capabilities needed to drive value-based care: Holistic views of patient care experiences, insight into utilization patterns, and communication between distributed care teams, just to name a few. Technologies such as telehealth support stronger connections between care team members, regardless of location, and add critical flexibility to care delivery, which directly contributes to sustainable economics. 

Denser connections also ensure greater long-term systemic sustainability — the savings on administrative costs alone could account for hundreds of billions of dollars. According to a report from ACP Journals, administrative costs make up 34% of total healthcare expenditures in the U.S., which includes everything from practice-level billing staff to the armies of people who pay and adjudicate claims.    

As we define healthcare’s next act together, we must focus on these connections — not only between technology systems, but also between people, institutions, structures, and incentives.  It’s a deceptively simple insight: a thriving healthcare ecosystem is one that is densely connected, open, and highly utilized.  We should all commit to creating that thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.  

Photo: SDI Productions, Getty Images


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Bob Segert

Bob Segert joined athenahealth in February 2019 after serving as the Chairman and CEO of Virence Health. He is a seasoned leader with a passion for understanding and delivering on the needs of the customer, a relentless commitment to operational excellence, and a track record for driving outstanding results.

Bob has over 20 years of leadership experience in the software and IT services industry – spanning sales, marketing, operations, and corporate strategy. He has served as Executive Chairman of Aspect Software and President and CEO of Expert Global Solutions, where he scaled the company’s global footprint and achieved market-leading positions in customer relationship management and business process outsourcing services. He was also President and CEO of GXS, Inc., the world’s largest B2B cloud integration platform.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of EPAM Systems, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Board of Governors and Foundation Board. He also sits on the executive committee of the Vogel Alcove, which supports early childhood development of homeless children in Dallas. Bob holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.

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