At the 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition, industry experts discussed the significant financial challenges facing the healthcare industry. While technology has the potential to provide solutions, including generative AI and hyperscale companies, implementing them may take longer than necessary. Additional difficulties include the rising expense of healthcare, the challenge of getting patients to act as consumers, and the difficulty of dealing with public health issues like gun violence. All parties will need to work together to address these issues and guarantee that everyone has access to high-quality healthcare services.
Health systems are facing a challenging financial future. The demand for healthcare services is rising, yet there are fewer resources available to hospitals due to the aging population and rising labour costs. The 2023 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition brought together industry experts to discuss the potential impact of technology on these challenges.
Kaveh Safavi, senior managing director of healthcare at Accenture, expressed concern that access to healthcare will become a much more significant issue. While he is hopeful that technology, such as generative AI, could alleviate some of the administrative and documentation burdens on providers, he is uncertain whether this future will come soon enough.
He believes that technology will provide solutions to these issues, but implementing them may take longer than necessary. “I think that tech is going to give us an answer. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to take advantage of it as quickly as we need to,” he said.
Cris Ross, chief information officer at the Mayo Clinic, believes that technology such as ChatGPT will gain traction, but he is not ready to unleash it yet. One reason for this is that technology sometimes provides false information confidently. Furthermore, many health systems lack the resources to take advantage of such technology.
“I think for many, many health systems for whom their IT department is the phone call to their EHR vendor, they don’t have the wherewithal to invest in sophisticated technologies,” he said. “And it’s going to have to be the hyperscale companies that can assist them because they can do things at scale.”
Larry Leisure, founder and managing director of Chicago Pacific Founders, believes that the increasing cost of healthcare may soon come to a head. Employers are no longer able to push costs onto their employees.
“For a whole swath of lower and middle-income workers, they can’t afford deductibles and coinsurance,” he said. “And so this notion that we’re going to be able to do some additional cost-shifting is highly problematic.”
Steven Nelson, president of Contigo Health, believes that while the industry talks about patients acting more like consumers, many are not very engaged. They only check their benefits at the very last minute.
“I think it’s going to be hard to refresh the consumer and get them to take concern unless they’re chronically ill, and it’s that meaningful unless they have a substance use disorder problem unless they have a diagnosis or something with their family member,” he said. “I just think it takes something else to get everybody at the table. Even in this conference, are we really, truly engaged in our benefits to reduce that demand? I don’t know if we are.”
However, Safavi argues that the idea that demand for healthcare can be easily prevented is an “appealing mythology.” Many diseases are driven by genetic and social factors, and the healthcare system will struggle to address some of the nation’s biggest public health concerns, such as gun violence.
“These are super complicated. It’s a combination of genetic and environmental factors that happen in certain sequences. Making good life choices may or may not work,” he said. “There are so many things that are going into it, to me it’s just harder and harder to have confidence that if you just live a good life it’s going to be enough.”
The panelists agreed that the healthcare industry is facing significant financial challenges that will require a combination of technology, policy changes, and societal awareness to solve. While technology has the potential to provide solutions, it is not a magic bullet that can solve all of the healthcare industry’s problems. Instead, it will take a collaborative effort from all stakeholders to address these challenges and ensure that everyone has access to high-quality healthcare services.
