Healthcare CEOs admit they thought they’d be further along in the transition to value-based care than they are today, a new survey shows.
Consulting firm Deloitte polled 25 hospital CEOs and six payer CEOs, all running companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue, on their perspectives on a slew of industry issues and found that they’re shifting investment focus to consumer tech and improving care coordination, including through virtual health.
“Many CEOs in our prior studies predicted that they would be much further along in adopting value-based payment models than they are today,” the analysts wrote. “They admit now that progress was much slower because efforts were much harder than they anticipated.”
Despite the tremendous challenge, the CEOs recognize that value-based models aren’t going away, as they have been a health policy cornerstone of both the Obama and Trump administrations.
The surveyed CEOs said value-based payment was the third-biggest driver of change in the industry, with 19 saying it will continue to have a major impact on the industry moving forward.
A growing focus on consumer-facing tools, however, sets up organizations for success regardless of how the shift to value-based payments continues, the researchers said. Should it continue full throttle, these tools will pay off, and if the transition stays slow these organizations will have a leg up thanks to consumer loyalty.
As evidence of this trend, the CEOs ranked ongoing shifts in care settings and more proactive consumers as the top two drivers of industry change, with 20 executives noting changing care settings as a “major” driver and 19 saying the same about evolving consumers.
However, they don’t see their core businesses going away anytime soon, the survey found. And they admit this may be short-sighted and could hurt them if major disruption does come.
“Nobody could foresee what Netflix did and … that’s the whole issue with a black swan event, nobody can see it,” one health system CEO said in the survey.
The execs acknowledge, though, that there are lessons to take away from the industry disrupters or innovative companies outside of healthcare, too.
A health plan CEO said: “We’re going to steal from companies we admire and bring them into healthcare. Why can’t we be like the large wholesale retailers? Why can’t we be like the TV and movie streaming companies?”