Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Utilization and Value in the Wake of an FSER Boom

By Morgan Atkins

Over the last several years, freestanding emergency rooms (FSERs) have seen a boom in popularity. FSERs provide 24/7 emergency care and are physically separate from a hospital campus. The allure of these offsite emergency departments stems from their potential to increase access to healthcare resources. However, FSERs are falling under scrutiny for the lack of price transparency and their tendency to operate in more affluent, populated areas.

Florida's state health regulatory entity, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), provides publicly available data on emergency room visits for the state of Florida. The AHCA data provides a field to differentiate which emergency visits occurred at a hospital-based ER and those at a FSER. Stratasan has analyzed the impact and utilization of FSERs to determine if they are providing a benefit to the communities they serve. Check out our infographic to find out what we learned.

How Leaders Can Look Within for Answers

By Morgan Atkins

With healthcare reimbursement constantly changing, health systems and hospitals are searching for new revenue streams to diversify their income. Financial cuts, new regulations, and payer contract negotiations have pushed healthcare institutions to find new, creative ways to keep revenue flowing while still maintaining high quality care.

“Exploring diversified, innovative revenue streams” was listed as third most important issue of strategic importance in a recent survey of 146 C-suite executive. A Becker’s Hospital Review article covering this survey shared that “C-suite executives at both health systems and community hospitals are shifting their focus to nontraditional sources of growth rather than relying solely on conventional determinants of market share.”

Tell a More Powerful Data Story with the Right Use of Color

By Morgan Atkins 

TED speakers David Grady and Jason Fried share in this infographic that organizations hold more than 3 billion meetings each year and executives spend 40–50 percent of their working hours—or twenty-three hours per week—in meetings. As a healthcare marketer or strategic planner, you can likely relate to these statistics, as you spend much of your time preparing for, leading, or following up on meetings. 

The presentations you create for your meetings can have a major impact on how successful your meetings will be. When your meetings include the delivery of data-based insights, it is especially important for your presentations to include well-designed, colorful visualizations.

Practical Guidance for Marketers and Planners Trying to Navigate Change

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Healthcare mergers and acquisitions across the US continue at a rapid pace. According to Becker's Hospital Review, about $2.35 trillion in deals occurred globally [in 2018], up 57 percent compared to the same period last year. “Whether it’s hospitals buying up independent medical practices, hospital systems swallowing one another, or insurance companies merging with pharmacy chains, the prevailing attitude now is that bigger is better,” Medical Economics.

Gist Healthcare recently shared this graphic, which highlights how consolidated the hospital sector has become. Gist’s graphic displays how health systems account for more than 90 percent of all discharges in the US, with the largest 11 systems accounting for a quarter of discharges, and the largest 67 accounting for half. 

How can healthcare strategic planners and marketers stay focused, yet flexible, during these times of consolidation and change? This post provides practical tips for how to deal with the inevitable challenges that will come during an integration. Key elements include: 

• Uniting separate strategies
• Managing and merging multiple brands
• Using your influence to affect change

Key Considerations for Proactive Healthcare Planners

By Gavin Chance

Market transitions and population shifts can alter your service area. These changes can sometimes be subtle, but still come with noteworthy effects. It’s important to pay attention to the signs that indicate change and be ready to reassess your service area definitions when appropriate. In this post, we’ll discuss three important signs to watch for.

Expertly Navigate the Complexity of New Site Placements 

By Morgan Atkins

A complex process that requires financial scrutiny and thorough planning, new site placements are an opportunity to extend service offerings, create new jobs for the community, and improve your hospital’s bottom line. But the fiscal commitment tied to expansion can give many leaders pause. Is it possible to be sure that your new placement is in the right location and that it will effectively meet the needs of the community? How can you be certain it will succeed? In this post, we’ll give you the tools you need to answer these questions and expand your health system with confidence.

Stay Safe this July 4th by Avoiding these Injury Trends

By Gavin Chance

Don’t become a statistic - stay safe this July 4th! In an effort to help you prepare for this holiday and avoid the most common accidents, we’ve researched fireworks injury data from the past five years. This is what we found:

• 72% of fireworks accidents occur at home
• Men are twice as likely to become injured as women
• 27.9% of injuries happen to children, ages 0-10 years old

Click-to-Tweet: Did you know? 72% of fireworks accidents occur at home, 11.75% occur in public, and 11% at a sporting event.

Interested in learning more, such as the most common diagnoses and where most injuries occur? Check out our infographic, below.

How to Foster a Data-Focused Culture

By Jennifer Keller

Gist Healthcare provides a weekly newsletter called the Weekly Gist.  A popular read in our office, we find it to be informative and useful for staying on top of the latest healthcare news.  In this newsletter, they distill the latest healthcare news, trends, and conversations with industry leaders into actionable guidance for CEOs and senior executives.

A recent excerpt from Gist caught our attention. The CMO of a regional health system shared that: “his personal efforts to champion greater performance transparency and tracking of key clinical metrics made a big difference in [his] system’s impressive results in elevating physician performance.” He went on to emphasize that “getting the doctors addicted to data” was a critical element of his system’s success.

How Small Hospital Planners and Marketers can Manage Multiple Responsibilities within One Role

By Hank Neuhoff

For planners and marketers at small or independent hospital systems, prioritization can be one of the greatest challenges. Many who have “Marketing” in their title are also responsible for planning and strategy as well, and it’s apparent that this phenomenon is due to one of two things:

• Strategy has increasingly become a more important function for the hospital or health system so this job was given to the department that made the most sense: marketing.
• Or, the planning position was eliminated over time and the function was consolidated with the marketing function.

Regardless of why or how things progressed in the way they did, one thing is certain; planners and marketers in these situations must be strategic in their efforts and find ways to accomplish more work with fewer resources. In this post, we’ll offer some tips and suggestions on how this can be done.