The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated healthcare transformation by a decade, but unprecedented challenges persist, making a bottleneck in healthcare innovation efforts. Hospitals are at a tipping level and the highway forward is grim. The looming recession, new aggressive entrants within the healthcare area, and acquainted constraints like sweeping workforce shortages, persistent illness, and provide chain crises are colliding and require healthcare organizations to take quick motion. In the meantime, shopper demand for proactive, customized experiences is at an all-time excessive. Embattled major care organizations are discovering it arduous to measure up, as they discover themselves within the throes of retail well being disruption and oncoming competitors from each course.

To thrive on this dynamic market, healthcare organizations should put money into transformation and workforce expertise or danger their market foothold. The way forward for healthcare depends upon resilience and proactivity to propel value-based care and enhance inhabitants well being outcomes.

In 2023, we predict:

Financial downturn and shopper behaviors will spike hospital bankruptcies by a 3rd.

Affected person volumes, high-deductible well being plans, and business insurance coverage charges will transfer the needle on hospital sensitivity to recession from low to excessive. Chapter 11 chapter filings for giant healthcare organizations in 2022 are monitoring 28% larger than for 2021. Rural hospitals are particularly in danger with greater than 30% at quick danger of closure resulting from low monetary reserves or reliance on authorities help. In 2020, the lack of employer insurance coverage and vital shift from personal to public insurance coverage value hospitals an estimated $95 billion in annual income and a further $33 billion resulting from cost-aversive shopper conduct.

To navigate this disaster and keep afloat, hospitals ought to begin quantifying their finance misery ranges now by calculating their Z-score month-to-month and monitoring it for twenty-four to 36 months. This may assist establish dangers and set off a monetary turnaround technique for hospitals at or nearing the purple zone.

Retail well being clinics will double their share of the first care market.

In 2023, sufferers will select retail well being for his or her major care wants as well being programs, constrained by insufficient assets, fail to match retail’s elevated affected person experiences. From 2019 to 2020, retail well being clinics skilled progress of 21.5% fueled initially by the necessity for native, handy COVID-19 testing websites, and sustained by their means to supply accessible, no-appointment-needed, handy, and low-cost high quality care. In 2022, the US retail clinic market dimension was valued at $3.49 billion, with extra retail firms seeking to be part of the ranks of CVS-Aetna, Walgreens, Walmart, Amazon, and Optum-United Well being Group. As retail well being doubles within the major care area, demand for well being programs to step up their affected person expertise sport will improve whereas sufferers flock to retail well being major care suppliers.

1 / 4 of the US grownup inhabitants will probably be handled with RPM instruments for persistent circumstances.

The necessity to monitor, report, and analyze sufferers with persistent circumstances of their time of want is a nationwide crucial. Forrester predicts distant affected person monitoring (RPM) instruments will play a important position in treating multimorbid sufferers to mitigate probably avoidable hospitalizations and the exacerbation of persistent ailments. At the moment, six in 10 People reside with at the very least one persistent illness, and the annual financial burden of the most typical persistent ailments is greater than $1 trillion. As of June 30, 2020, an estimated 41% of US adults reported having delayed or averted medical care through the pandemic.

RPM took off as a vital a part of increasing acute-care-at-home fashions. The worldwide RPM market is projected to succeed in $175.2 billion by 2027 from US$53.6 billion in 2022, at a compound annual progress price of 26.7%. Gadgets like weight scales, pulse oximeters, blood glucose meters, blood stress displays, coronary heart displays, and wearables will enhance scientific prognosis and take away socioeconomic hurdles resulting from social determinants of well being.

Our predictions will enable you establish the important thing challenges and alternatives forward and energy your group with unique perception on methods to achieve an aggressive edge. Learn our report (shopper entry) for a deeper dive on what 2023 has in retailer for healthcare, and tune into our upcoming shopper webinar to start strategizing to succeed in new ranges of success in 2023.

To know the key dynamics that can impression the broader enterprise panorama subsequent 12 months, go to Forrester’s Predictions 2023 hub.

 

Senior Analyst, Alex Shlyankevich, Analyst, Kyle Rybarczyk, and Researcher, Kara Wilson contributed to this weblog.