Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

How Patients are Utilizing this Convenient Form of On-demand Care

By Daniel Dreaden

Urgent care centers continue to be a popular alternative for patients in need of care that fits their busy schedules. The convenience of these clinics—with longer hours and broader availability—is appealing to patients seeking fast, reliable relief to minor injuries and illnesses. 

As providers look to meet these needs by opening new urgent care clinics, it helps to know the top diseases being treated at these facilities. The list of diseases shown in the infographic below provides a helpful starting point for urgent care placement discussions. 

Track Your Patient’s Journey for More Informed Growth Planning

By Jennifer Beck

As we countdown the days to the 2020 election, political debate over how to improve the US healthcare system continues. A push for lower cost, higher quality care is a top focus for many candidates. Meanwhile, mergers and acquisitions between hospitals and health-care focused companies continue to transpire. These unions often tout similar goals of better care and reduced expenses, though there is debate, of course, over the likelihood of those results. 

No one truly knows what the future of healthcare in the US will look like. But for the immediate future, the shift by insurers and health systems to a value-based reimbursement methodology is already underway.  

In a value-based reimbursement model, providers are compensated for the quality of the care they provide which is measured by patient health outcomes. They are rewarded for effectively managing the health of individuals and populations. 

As value-based reimbursement models become more common, the need for a more team-oriented approach to patient care is also a must. Care must be coordinated across the continuum to deliver the best health outcomes possible.

Uncover the Fundamental Truths Your APCD Should Deliver

By Morgan Atkins and Daniel Dreaden

Not all APCD (all-payer claims data) is created equally. Depending on the data aggregator and clearinghouse used, the APCD offered by any given analytics company can vary significantly.

When choosing a partner to provide your APCD, it can be difficult to discern what’s most important. Many incentives offered may sound nice to have, but could also be distractions to keep you from noticing more critical features that are lacking. As you consider your options, keep these three questions in mind:

• Does this APCD provide patient cohort tracking?
• Will you be able to access submit and remit data?
• Is there transparency into what is being modeled and how?

Let's discuss in more detail each of these questions and why it’s critical to have these clearly answered before signing on with an APCD provider.

A More Efficient Way to Boost Revenue and Attract Patients

By Tony Camarata

Historically, market performance has been measured through market share, a single snapshot of patients treated. While market share can be used to measure market position, it fails to deliver the complex intricacies of patient choice, which are vital to improving care delivery. Hospitals planners need better visibility into the full continuum of patient choice in order to deliver the right services for their patients.

Share of wallet provides this added visibility by not only showing the patient treatment snapshot, but also showing everywhere else your patients are utilizing care. These insights will lead your team down the path of determining if you can provide that same care to your patients and potentially attract them to choose your hospital over your competition.

Effectively Leverage Your Data for Maximum Growth Insights

By Lee Ann Lambdin, Kola Omotade, Tony Camarata

Are you asking the wrong questions of the right data; or the right questions of the wrong data? Most healthcare strategic planners understand the value of using data for informed decision making, but many don’t know how to effectively use data—or when to acquire new data—to find the answers they need.

When looking to assess market share or performance, you may feel the datasets you already have access to will provide the answers you need. But what if you don’t have the right data to answer these particular questions? Using the wrong data, you may miss important segments of your population in your analysis and risk using out-of-date or inconsistent data. A new data set all together may be needed to properly address the issues at hand.

Why You Need Both for Growth Planning and Physician Relations

By Haley Attridge, Tony Camarata, Rebecca Groner, Lee Ann Lambdin, and Dave Sellers

Every hospital and healthcare system looking to grow could benefit from reliable, clean, and standardized healthcare patient data. It’s critical for strategic planners and physician liaisons, in particular, to have access to data they can trust when looking to expand offerings, build physician relationships, and improve accessibility to care for their service area.

We recently compared state and CMS datasets and discussed how to sort through the complexities of both to extract valuable insights. If you missed that post, we encourage you to check it out, here.

In this post, we’re analyzing state and all-payer claims data. We’ll explore how these datasets differ, why they differ, and how, when armed with insights from both datasets, planners and liaisons can gain a more complete picture of the opportunities within their market.