by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | July 20, 2016
From the July 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: What is your prediction for how the specialty will have changed a decade from now?
MBL: The U.S. health care system that we know today will not and should not exist. The remnants of volume-based care will be eliminated and replaced with efforts of care coordination and prevention. Under population management, health systems, physicians, payers, pharmacy benefits managers, pharmacies and all transition of care providers will evolve into new models focused on the longitudinal view of a patient that spans all aspects of health, wellness, prevention and care. When care is needed, it will be virtual, social and personal. What do I mean by this?
• Virtual: Care will need to be convenient and available virtually through eVisits and concierge medicine delivered through a patient’s phone or computer.
• Social: Consumerism of health care is demanding that care will need to be delivered in a more transparent fashion as rating systems are adopted through publishing hospital and physician quality scores, health plan ratings and the expanded use of social medial sites such as Yelp to post patient satisfaction ratings.
• Personal: Through advanced genomics and diagnostics, evidenced-based medicine can be personalized by patient. This targeted approach can improve patient outcomes and change the cost curve by only introducing treatment or diagnosis that will produce the desired outcome for that patient. Supply chain management will expand to encompass non-labor costs across the continuum of care, focused on patient safety, quality and outcomes under shared cost agreements with the suppliers of the product or service.
We call this risk-based contracting today, but I would envision this name will morph over time. But the intent of having channel partners contract based on proposed outcome will replace contracts based on acquisition cost.
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