Dive Brief:
- Healthcare leaders shared their five-year industry predictions on Monday during a session at the 13th Annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C.
- While the need for quality measures and measurement alignment is clear, the panelists stated the amount of quality measurements is currently too burdensome.
- The speakers also noted post acute care and home healthcare will be getting more attention in the next five years.
Dive Insight:
UnitedHealth Group Executive Vice President of Medical Affairs and CMO Richard Migliori, Kindred Healthcare CMO Marc D. Rothman, and Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO Paul B. Rothman gathered on stage to discuss what they see to be coming down the healthcare pipeline.
As technology use increases, processing languages may change as well as EHR interfaces, Migliori said adding he thinks the industry is going to start seeing more community-based assets (eg. churches) invovled in patient care as there are often failures in meeting certain quality standards due to poor care coordination.
The speakers want to propose four sets of quality measures, though which ones or how many should be included is yet to be known.
"We're being measured in hundreds of ways and it has been very challenging," Paul Rothman said.
"These things affect the ability to be independent," Marc Rothman said.
Johns Hopkins Medicine's goal, according to Rothman, is to lead the inquiry in what is actually important to measure -- the true measures of quality. "We want to refine them to a reasonable amount," he said.
The panelists stated certain areas of the industry will be transforming in the next five years. "I think you're going to see a lot of transformation in post-acute long-term care," Kindred Healthcare CMO Marc Rothman said. "Post acute-care offers an interesting environment, which is very much a throwback to how things use to be."
He also stated much higher quality of care will be driven by physician involvement, there will be more innovation in the home care setting, and home health services will be increasingly be paid for value.
Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO Paul B. Rothman said consumerism and the voice of the patient will be driven by high co-pays. He noted the patient is going to be more involved in their care with home monitoring, and communities will be able to work to identity high-cost patients,
"The voice of the patient in their own care will be a major driver, especially if we have a Republican president," he said.
Within the next five years, Migliori projects that the country will be about 45,000 primary care physicians short of what it needs to meet the patient demand. The American Association of Medical Colleges recently stated the physician shortage will range between 61,700 and 94,700 by 2025.
In order to address this issue, Migliori said, "I think one of the things we may have to do is reexamine the model of care that we use to have more sharing of responsibilities amongst physicians, amongst nurse practitioners, [and] physician assistants."