In a recent blog post, Nexera's Vice President Perry Sham comments on healthcare's volume shifting to outpatients and how to stay on top of the shift by focusing on supply chain.
As patients seek care in outpatient settings, hospital inpatient departments are seeing sharp decreases in revenue—a heavy hit to take on top of existing policy-driven financial challenges. Not only are reimbursement policies rewarding providers for treating patients in lower acuity settings, but increased competition in the freestanding clinic market is squeezing hospital margins even more.
Big retail chains, like CVS, Target, and Walgreens, have extended their health services beyond vaccinations and basic screenings to include treating minor injuries and illnesses. These urgent care centers and other freestanding provider types are frequently more convenient—offering late night and weekend hours in local shopping centers—and can operate less expensively, since they do not have to support high-acuity emergency rooms. Additionally, many of these new players have a distinct advantage as trusted, consumer-facing brands.
It's no secret that hospitals and health systems are under pressure to make sense of the value-based care models being encouraged by the CMS and other payers, which has propelled the healthcare merger-and-acquisition movement. However, increased competition has heightened the need for hospitals to address the outpatient volume shift with great haste. To continue reading, click here >>