Overall demand for healthcare services is poised to continue its significant growth across various service lines over the next decade, with outpatient care expected to experience the highest growth rate and inpatient services seeing more moderate increases, according to Sg2’s 2025 Impact of Change Forecast published in June.
Sg2’s forecasting model integrates a broad range of factors, including national data, institutional data, and market trends. National population changes, epidemiological shifts, economic influences, policy developments and advances in technology were considered in the projections.
Sg2 used data from the HCUP National Inpatient Sample and CMS Limited Data Sets, alongside its own analysis of healthcare usage trends.
“These forecasts reflect a changing care landscape that will require health systems to adjust both their physical footprints and clinical operations,” Tori Richie, senior director of Sg2 Intelligence, said. “Depending on the market, health systems may consider growing their post-acute footprint, investing in offerings, such as remote patient monitoring or virtual nursing to scale home-based care.”
10 things to know:
1. Patient volumes in outpatient care are expected to increase by 18% over the next decade. The shift toward outpatient surgery is notable, with volumes projected to rise by 20% over the same period.
2. Inpatient care will see a more modest growth rate of 5% over the next decade, though patient acuity is expected to rise, which could affect the complexity and cost of care.
3. Post-acute care volume will grow by 31%, with the most significant increase seen in home health services, which are expected to grow by 24% over the next decade.
4. Evaluation and management visits are expected to grow by 16%, with virtual care visits making up 19% of all E&M visits by 2035.
5. Discharges for type 2 diabetes patients are expected to slow, partly due to the increasing use of GLP-1s.
6. Services like home and domiciliary hospice visits and home and domiciliary E&M visits are anticipated to see strong demand, growing by 43% and 33%, respectively .
7. Emergency department volumes will grow 5% by 2035, with a rise in emergent visits, although urgent care visits are expected to remain flat.
8. Virtual visits, especially for new patient visits, are expected to represent 19% of visits by 2035, suggesting a continued shift towards telehealth and remote care.
9. Cancer outpatient volumes are expected to grow by 18%, while inpatient volumes in this area will remain flat. Analysts with Sg2 did note that rising cancer prevalence in young adults suggests greater need for health systems to develop new programs to better target, diagnose and treat the disease in a younger patient population.
10. Pediatric care will shift toward outpatient services, with inpatient pediatric discharges declining by 1% and outpatient volumes growing by 8%.
