2020 Healthcare Trends

In 2020 the healthcare industry will continue to see growth in several areas including spend on ERP replacement systems, digital transformation investments, data aggregation techniques, and mergers and acquisitions. Healthcare leaders should be aware of these trends to ensure their organizations are responding to the changes involving their business, communities, and competitors.

Spend on ERP Replacement Growth

By 2025, the U.S. healthcare ERP market size is expected to reach over $2 billion, according to a report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growth of this market is being influenced by multiple factors. One is that healthcare providers must manage a large amount of data that gets accumulated through digital resources and, as a result, they must implement new ERP software. Additional causes are the rising burden of payment processing, insurance, and the administrative costs of enrolling new patients. ERP replacement systems require new integrations in real-time and a large sum of new data flowing into an Enterprise Data Warehouse that is visualized through Business Intelligence.

Digital Transformations

Patient Engagement Strategies

Healthcare systems are focusing on creating more engaging digital environments for their patients. In order to accomplish this they are reevaluating their patient engagement plans and increasing investments in Patient Portals and Telemedicine. Patient Portals are applications used for setting appointments, secure messaging with your provider, and are easy to use and typically available 24/7. Telemedicine allows patients to speak with a doctor virtually, in real-time and receive a diagnosis and prescriptions for certain conditions.

While some healthcare payers are hesitant to embrace telemedicine practices because of reimbursement worries, the Center for Connected Medicine and KLAS reports an optimistic outlook for adoption in the coming years. Whether a patient decides to use these types of new technologies depends on their age and socioeconomic status. The challenge for healthcare systems will be figuring out how to target and change patient behavior to utilize patient portals and telemedicine.

Healthcare and the Cloud

According to Global Market Insights Inc., the global healthcare cloud computing market is poised to surpass $55 billion by 2025. Healthcare companies are directly benefiting from cloud adoption in several ways including accessibility, personal data privacy, and taming resource inefficiency.

• Accessibility: Telemedicine gives patients that live in remote areas or do not have the means to travel, access to doctors they would have otherwise not been able to visit. 
• Personal Data Privacy: Healthcare organizations accumulate an enormous amount of personal data that is at risk if not managed properly. Cloud-based solutions have enabled these organizations to use safer security tools which reduces liability.
• Resource Inefficiency: One of the major factors that contributes to the rising cost of healthcare is resource inefficiency among medical staff, equipment, and access to patient pools. By implementing AI into the healthcare environment, providers are able to do more with smarter tools that give them access to more patients.

Data and Analytics

Data Aggregation

Health systems have an extraordinary amount of patient data, including clinical, demographic, and financial data, housed among multiple systems. Healthcare companies are moving closer to full data integration, meaning all of the different types of patient data can be stored in one place, and will result in better decision-making for doctors and a shift to value-based care. A majority of organizations either partner with their EMR vendor or create an internal analytics team to achieve their aggregation goals.

Interoperability

As we stated above, engaging patient portals are becoming increasingly popular and are in high demand among healthcare systems. In order to have an effective patient portal that is easy to use, patient information must be synchronized through data aggregation, which results in interoperability.  Interoperability in a healthcare ecosystem exists when different information systems have the ability to access and use patient data in a coordinated effort, across organizational boundaries, to provide a timely report of a patient’s health. Putting patients at the center of communications will spur changes to make interoperability more attainable. This means that a patient’s clinical history and data could follow them from their doctor’s office, to the pharmacy, to their home devices and more.

Industry Movement

Spanning Segments with Mergers and Acquisitions

Healthcare companies are rapidly spanning across multiple industry segments, allowing them to expand their capabilities, invest in a new client-base, and broaden their business portfolios as a whole. The lines that define these healthcare segments are beginning to blur. For example, health systems are merging with pharmaceutical companies, retail giants are expanding to include med device, insurance and provider offerings, and tech firms are merging their solutions into health systems’ operations. Megamergers that made news headlines in 2019 include CVS and  Aetna, Centene and Wellcare, Total Health Care and Priority Health, and Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives In order to succeed, mergers and acquisitions as big as these require consolidation without a disruption of services.