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My crystal ball is a little foggy so I decided to ask my Twitter followers (@HealthBizBlog) to help compile a list of health care predictions for 2011. I’ve integrated my thoughts with theirs and organized the predictions into four themes:
- Transparency will change from buzzword to reality
- Information technology progress will be uneven, with the biggest breakthroughs in mobile
- A culture of patient safety will begin to take root
- Health reform implementation will advance despite some ugly battles
Transparency will change from buzzword to reality.
The health care industry is tremendously opaque. Patients and doctors don’t know the price of medical services, while pharmaceutical and medical device makers maintain secret financial arrangements with physicians.
Much is likely to change for the better in 2011.
Giovanni Colella, CEO of health care transparency company Castlight Health (@CastlightHealth) predicts, “Consumers will increase their demands for personalized information about health care cost, quality and convenience and will turn to innovative applications to address these needs.”
Bright lights will be trained on the interaction between industry and physicians.
The Affordable Care Act requires pharmaceutical and device companies to report payments to physicians starting in 2013; voluntary reporting is likely to pick up next year. Beyond that, @PharmaGossip predicts, “PharmaWikiLeaks will become a force for good,” citing a recent leak about Pfizer in Nigeria as Exhibit A.
Information technology progress will be uneven, with the biggest breakthroughs in mobile.
AOL founder Steve Case (@SteveCase) tells me, “Mobile health will be a game changer in health and wellness.” I agree that mobile apps and devices present a big opportunity to prevent and manage chronic illness.
Thanks to advances in IT adoption by providers and patients, Kaiser’s Dr. Ted Eytan (@tedeytan) expresses confidence that, “The patient will finally become a customer of health care.”on
Meanwhile, physicians, hospitals and vendors will continue to make slow, uneven progress on electronic health record implementation in the quest to meet Meaningful Use requirements that qualify them for federal stimulus funds. Health IT expert David Ahern (@dahern1) says, “EHR vendor consolidation will be the order of the day, especially as companies discover how difficult it will be for them to reach Stages 2 and 3 of Meaningful Use on their own.”
A culture of patient safety will begin to take root.
Beth Israel Deaconess President and CEO Paul Levy (@Paulflevy) writes, “Too many people will still be harmed in clinical settings because of a lack of focus in redesigning the work done in hospitals.”
Dennis Ferrill (@DennisFerrill), CEO of eLearning company APS offers a path forward, “We will approach a tipping point in the culture of patient safety as institutions find that significant adverse events occur under their watch, while more of their peers take concrete steps forward. Among the observable data points supporting this movement will be an increasing tendency to mandate key protocols and safety training for nursing and physician staff as hospitals gain confidence in their duty to control quality and outcomes.”
Since the Vioxx debacle, FDA and patients have sought reassurance on patient safety, a shift that will continue in 2011, according to iCardiac Technologies CEO Mike Totterman (@mtotterman). “Regulatory cardiac safety requirements will tighten, but emerging technologies will facilitate compliance with new standards to produce better, more reliable results in clinical trials.”
Health reform will prevail despite ugly battles.
“Always an optimist, I think 2011 is the year that economic recovery takes hold,” writes Dr. Bruce Siegel (@siegelmd), CEO of the National Association of Public Hospitals. “This changes the national health care debate dramatically as the Administration’s leverage is bolstered. There are some very ugly battles ahead, especially in the state houses, but overall it’s a year of consolidation.” To demonstrate he’s a realist, he adds, “Also, the Redskins won’t go to the Superbowl!”
I’m a little less sanguine than Dr. Siegel about the prospects for the Accountable Care Act. I expect Republicans to make moderate progress chipping away at the law, even though repeal is not in the offing. The recent one-year Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) fix, which halted the automatic cut to Medicare reimbursement rates, was financed by snatching a little bit from PPACA insurance subsidies. Expect more gambits like that, along with objections to proposed rules, attempts to defund or delay specific provisions, and continued court challenges to the law itself.
David E. Williams is co-founder of MedPharma Partners LLC, strategy consultant in technology enabled health care services, pharma, biotech, and medical devices. Formerly with BCG and LEK. He blogs regularly at Health Business Blog, where this post first appeared.
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Citus Health – It is an online Home Infusion Support Solution, first of its kind of a start up offering Home Infusion services.
Based in New York, Citus Health has created a solution named “Call Bell” to help revolutionize how home infusion companies connect with patients. Melissa Kozak, CEO, told how home infusion patients often needlessly face tremendous anxiety along with many potential adverse events such as delays in receiving antibiotics, chemotherapy, nutrition etc. firsthand, better patient care and better outcomes at a reduced costpatients’ and communications.. whenhealthcare she invented this technology after spending seven years as an on-call nurse for a home infusion company “to help keep my patients out of the hospital.” Kozak experienced
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I agree that there needs to be transparency…people need to know what’s going on and trust the source.
To those who are interested in the future of healthcare:
3rd mHealth Networking Conference
March 30-31, 2011 Chicago IL
Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel and Conference Center
The 3rd mHealth Networking Conference will focus on new clinicians’ tools, pharma opportunities, and mHealth developments, exploring such topics as:
-The adoption rate of new medical apps on mDevices – successes and failures
-How payers are addressing mHealth opportunities
-Movement toward prescribing apps
-Integrating mHealth applications – best practices
-mHealth strategies for hospitals, clinics, or doctor’s offices
-Patients role in moving providers toward mHealth communications
-International implementations
And more…
Advance registration through Frebruary 28, 2011.
Hotel reservations: The conference will take place at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel & Conference Center, which offers free shuttle transportation to and from the airport. We’ve negotiated the very reasonable hotel rate of $145/single or double room for attendees.
Call for presentations deadline: 10 January 2011. Interested users, implementers, and planners (including consultants) are encouraged to submit by completing our online template. Note that this call for presentations is for non-commercial presentations only.
Vendor opportunities, contact Beth Schrager at 978-263-9931 or bschrager@comcast.net.
“Hello, I’m in septic shock with total body failure. How much will you charge to treat me?”
Sorry, but “price-competitive purchase decisions” only works for already inexpensive, intermittent, non-urgent care. It’s not relevant when the big bucks are spent.
(Posting non-stop today while waiting for the computers to come back up at the nursing home!)
David – you are right on target when it comes to the importance of transparency in healthcare costs, and the growing trend toward cost transparency in healthcare in the coming year. I believe the move toward Consumer-Driven Health Plans will accelerate in 2011 as well, but to be effective, consumers need three things – the freedom to negotiate, the economic imperative to negotiate, and accurate information on current, local healthcare costs.
change:healthcare has developed a regularly-updated Healthcare Transparency Index (http://www.changehealthcare.com/hcti/index.html) that provides consumers with exactly this kind of trend information they can use to make more informed healthcare purchase decisions.
With tools like this – along with both the freedom to negotiate and the economic incentive to negotiate – I feel that consumers in increasing numbers in 2011 will put economic pressure on physicians, pharmacies and other healthcare product/service providers to bring costs down by making price-competitive purchase decisions.
Whether ACA moves forward, as you predict, or is revised or replaced as others predict, this mandate for cost-competitive change will continue to move forward. Either way, if consumer healthcare costs are to come under control, consumers themselves will have to use accurate local cost information to negotiate for the best healthcare services and products at the best costs. CDHP is one way this will happen, but even without such a plan, informed and motivated consumers will be at the forefront of system-wide cost containment.
David – you’re right – but the key to this is consumers having access to accurate and local cost information; transparency has to be localized so people can act on it. Is there a source of local consumer cost information available?
Ned Barnett
Las Vegas