Most Healthcare Leaders would refer to such losses as a result of higher personnel expenses, physician fatigue, the Great Resignation, and other factors.
It seems likely that many of the same problems and tendencies that plagued 2022 will continue into 2023, and some of them may even worsen. Also, most businesses will need to eke out every last cent of their investment money in 2023 due to the year’s approaching economic instability. To face the problems of 2023 head-on, healthcare institutions should prioritize the following five areas.
Here is where Healthcare Leaders should focus in 2023;
1. Provide a great digital experience to retain patients.
As was previously indicated, the economic uncertainties leading up to 2023 are compelling most providers to emphasize lower costs and greater return-on-investment efforts. In most cases, the return on investment (ROI) from concentrating on maintaining connections with existing patients is greater than the ROI from focusing on acquiring new patients4.
Cedar commissioned a poll in 2019 and found that 41% of patients would consider moving to a different provider if they provided a better digital experience, and 20% of customers had already left their current provider owing to a bad digital experience5. With the increase in asynchronous communication and distant engagement that preceded the pandemic, the results of this study in 2022 would have certainly provided an even more compelling argument for enhancing the patient’s digital experience.
If you want to keep your patients happy as Healthcare Leaders without breaking the bank, what do you do?
Spend your money wisely by making the most of the patient interaction features built into your EHR and other software platforms.
2. Reduce doctor exhaustion while increasing patient satisfaction by automating communication.
Up to 63 percent of Healthcare Leaders reported feeling burned out in 2021. There was also a decline in how satisfied people were with balancing their work and personal lives.
Among the roughly 400,000 registered nurses who left their positions in the last year, over one-third stated burnout as their reason for quitting8.
Reducing clinician burnout has financial benefits in addition to the altruistic goal of encouraging healthier lives among staff members. When you include recruiting, sign-on incentives, missed income, and onboarding expenses, physician burnout may cost your business anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000 per doctor.
Reducing or eliminating repetitive duties, such as giving the same update to several patients or families or giving the same discharge instructions or answers to multiple sets of questions, may help nurses avoid burnout.
Measurable gains in patient outcomes and satisfaction, as well as increases in safety and quality, and decreases in cost, are all facilitated by keeping family members updated, educated, and involved in patient care10.
Incisive suggests using such platforms to disseminate the whole patient record to all concerned parties at once. Incisive also suggests auditing operational processes to locate opportunities for quickstep actions and auto-populating text in order to reduce the time it takes for operational staff and physicians to react to patients.
3. Reduce expenses and improve patient outcomes by extending treatment outside the typical four walls.
You may have noticed a trend by now: all of our suggestions for the year 2023 revolve around saving money and making the most of current resources. Expanding the range of medical services provided to patients outside of hospitals is not any different.
Internal medicine specialist and researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Dr. David Levine found that patients who got treatment at home had overall expenses that were 38% lower. The research, according to Healthcare Leaders Dr. Levine:
The results of this study “consolidate the concept that, for appropriate patients, we can give hospital-level care outside of the four walls of the typical hospital,” and “provide further evidence necessary to make home hospital care the standard of care in our nation.”
In case you were afraid that if the public health emergency (PHE) ended, too would the CMS waiver that permitted many organizations to increase their hospital-at-home operations, we have some good news. The Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCAH) waiver was extended by Congress for a further two years in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which was enacted in December 202212.
Moreover, 49% of doctors say that the bulk of Healthcare Leaders will be offered at a patient’s home during the next ten years13, and 63% of clinicians predict that most consultations with patients will be distant in the next ten years. Clinicians will seek companies that at least have the plan to increase these services’ availability while keeping the user experience in mind (provider and patient).
Through increasing telehealth use cases, remote patient-submitted data, and remote patient monitoring, Incisive suggests establishing the groundwork for hospital-at-home programs (automated device integration).
4. Modify and improve authorization routines.
In 2020, a little over two years ago, CMS proposed a regulation to increase the electronic interchange of healthcare data and expedite procedures connected to prior authorization requests. However, in December 2022, CMS withdrew the regulation and substituted the CMS Increasing Interoperability and Enhancing Prior Authorization Procedures Proposed Rule (CMS-0057-P)14.
Prior permission requests take an average of 21 minutes to execute manually, but just 8 minutes via a web portal, and only 4 minutes through an electronic exchange15, according to research published in 2019 by the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH). Prior authorization, according to the same research, is “the most expensive, time-consuming administrative procedure for providers.”
With the new CMS proposed regulation not set to take effect until January 1, 2026, several states are enacting their own laws to achieve the same aims. In Michigan, for instance, Senate Bill 247 would lessen paperwork by mandating that, by June 1, 2023, insurance providers provide patients with a uniform electronic prior authorization process16. During the last decade Healthcare Leaders, at least 10 more states have implemented statewide, standardized computerized systems for filing prior authorizations for medications16.
To cut administrative expenses and be ready for expanded access to electronic prior authorizations via existing and future federal and state requirements, Incisive advises providers to begin the task of optimizing their prior authorization procedures immediately. Incisive suggests completing a current state assessment if you are unsure of how to begin, as this will help you pinpoint the areas of your processes that might be automated with the help of now-available or soon-to-be-available technologies.
