
By JOE FLOWER
The system is unstable. We are already seeing the precursor waves of massive and multiple disturbances to come. Disruption at key leverage points, new entrants, shifting public awareness and serious political competition cast omens and signs of a highly changed future.
So what’s the frequency? What are the smart bets for a strategic chief financial officer at a payer or provider facing such a bumpy ride? They are radically different from today’s dominant consensus strategies. In this five-part series, Joe Flower lays out the argument, the nature of the instability, and the best-bet strategies.
Providers:
- Cost. Get serious control of your costs. Most providers I talk to are dismissive. “Yeah, yeah, you’ve been saying that for 10 years. We’re on it, believe me.” But I don’t believe them. Observation of the industry makes it clear that most healthcare providers have not gone after costs with nearly the ferocity of other industries. Some providers that I have worked with and interviewed over recent years have gotten their full cost of ownership down to a level where they can survive on Medicaid rates (that’s not a typo, I mean Medicaid) and build bigger, stronger systems at the same time. They have proven it can be done. But this is far from the industry norm.
In the new competition, getting your costs seriously down is not the way to win. It’s just the price of admission. In the new competition, any entity that can deliver any particular service at a lower price will steal that business from you. You need to be that entity. - Overtreatment and waste. Do a deep and honest analysis of how much of your book of business is actually not effective, not necessary, does not deliver value or satisfaction to the customer—because that book of business is likely to wither away under alternative financing arrangements. Keep in mind that among various studies, the low estimate of how much of healthcare delivers no real value to the customer (an estimate by doctors about their own specialties) is 20%. The high end (in a PricewaterhouseCoopers study) is 54.5%. Most studies and estimates cluster around 35%.
- Abandon monopolistic practices. An “all system” fee-for-service contract hidden from public scrutiny is smart, but not wise. It may help this year, maybe next year, but in the longer run it creates vulnerability to political attack, legislation, and lawsuits, and also to shifts in the market. A semi-monopoly position allows you to charge a premium for your products, but it locks you into that ability to charge a premium. As the market shifts and finds ways around paying high prices, you will find that you will be forced to compete at the lower prices, but you will not have developed the partnerships, the strategies, and the product lines to do that. If there is no competition in your area, then compete with yourself to forestall lower-cost competition developing.
- Birth your competition. The growth area in the new healthcare competition will be: “How to cut into the hospital’s bottom line by keeping people out of the hospital.” The most competitive business models in healthcare will be in the business of cutting off hospitals’ revenue streams upstream.
Get into this business model, even if you are a hospital. Especially if you are a hospital. Get into this business and get better at it than any potential competition. Create high-performance bundled programs with deeply managed costs well below the industry median. Get into contracts with large buyers for particular niches in which you give financial and quality performance guarantees. If you can’t guarantee that you can drop the cost and improve the quality, you will lose that business to someone else who can show that track record and give that guarantee.
Put yourself into all the business models that are disrupting you, such as outpatient clinics, community clinics, mobile vans, mini-hospitals, stand-alone emergency departments, onsite clinics, personalized management of complex cases, direct-pay primary care and others. Make these businesses able to compete for market share by unshackling them from hospital pricing and facilities fees.
Risky? Sure, but you do not want to end up being just the super-expensive job shop at the end of the line that every single customer and buyer is making every effort to avoid.