Important factors to be noticed by the hospitals in the next 5 years

Globally, healthcare industry is thriving for delivery of patient-centric, technology -enabled ‘smart’ care. Hospitals today have to look for cost-effective and innovative ways for achieving patient outcomes with quality and value-based approaches. Noticeable factors for achieving this challenging proposition are entailed below.

• Significant changes impacting Healthcare Finance are:
• Emergence of Alternative Payment Models offering tremendous opportunities for lowered spending simultaneously improving care co-ordination and quality
• Increased participation of private players boosting value based care through bundled price offerings for reducing costs
• Improved experience of healthcare providers by redesigned workflows for reducing administrative expenses by preventing staff -burnouts
• Continued Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions for achieving economies of scale through partnerships

• Need for producing a positive revenue margin despite a stiff combat with rising healthcare costs and revenue pressures
• Paradigm shift with the strategic movement from volume to value-based healthcare transactions
• Emergence of risk bearing and co-ordinated patient care models
• Strong compulsions for responding to complex healthcare policies and regulations to provide patient safety and voluminous data protection
• Proactive mitigation of cyber threat risks and health insurance frauds
• Making massive investments in exponential technologies for globally accessing healthcare delivery
• Pursuing active engagements with consumer in improving patient experiences rather than mere ‘price’ focus
• Demand for thorough assessment of healthcare staff by parameters of talent category, automation levels and physical proximity
• Equipping the future healthcare workforce adequately to combat staff shortages

• There is a strong need for deploying Augmented Reality techniques in medical training. This enables physicians and specialists to see the diagnosis and treatment procedures upfront. Thereby they can learn new skills and expand their capabilities easily with information available at their fingertips. This expedites treatment time for seamlessly addressing patient needs.
• Healthcare data can be utilized for enhancing patient experience .It can be used for
  • Predicting probability of patient’s sickness
  • Taking proactive steps for preventive healthcare
  • Creating personalised care plans
  • Deploying potential measures to limit epidemic outbreaks.
• Providing Patient Personalisation and Customized Experiences is another growing trend. Patient information is thereby quickly accessible along with medical history, potential health issues and preferences. So the right treatment recommendations can be made straight away decreasing waiting periods.
• Usage of wearable devices for monitoring personal health is gaining momentum. It reduces frequency of hospital visits and enables better tracking of patient’s vital parameters like blood pressure, pulse rates and sugar levels on a regular basis. Doctors are also notified in case of abnormal deviations for taking further action.
• Hospitals are now using smart technology in healthcare devices to enhance patient comfort and care. This also increases their operating efficiency and reduces risk of human errors. Smart beds and robots for patient monitoring are examples for this.

• OM deals with reducing operating inefficiencies. The following measures improves potential savings in hospitals –
• Deploying alternate staffing models, reducing supply/administrative costs and enhancing outpatient services for achieving better margins
• Exploring new resources like Intellectual Property (IP) and Joint Ventures (JV) for increasing revenues
• Successfully transitioning to value-based care approach for addressing holistic health of population
• Focusing on wellness /preventive health programmes
• Deploying innovative care delivery models based on data analytics
• Imperatively carrying out complete assessments of how new regulatory policies impact hospitals services
• Developing strategies for reducing administrative and financial exposure and maintaining reputation
• Accruing cost benefits of digitisation/technology improvisation by investing in electronic health records, interoperability and big data handling
• Embracing strategies for collaborating technology and talent for reducing competition