5 healthcare trends to look out for in 2014

by Kent Bottles While my list of top five trends for hospital leaders to watch in 2014 cannot compete with the Pantone Color Institute's prediction that Radiant Orchid will be next year's color of the year, these healthcare trends could spell the difference between success and failure for your healthcare organization. 1. "It's the Prices Stupid" The above heading is the title of a 10-year-old article that points out higher healthcare spending and lower use of services results in much higher American prices than in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. This year, Steven Brill's Time Magazine article "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us" and Elisabeth Rosenthal's New York Times series "Paying Till It Hurts" alerted the general public to pay more attention to the high prices of medical care. By providing consumers with accurate prices and endorsing increased transparency, hospital leaders would be wise to get out in front of this issue, which isn't going away. 2. Healthcare at your fingertips, not in the hospital Mobile health is a trend hospital executives need to give more attention, especially as the migration of some care out of the hospital into the community grows. Millennials send an average of 88 text messages a day, and a quarter of Facebook's 1 billion users are mobile only. Does your hospital have a mobile healthcare strategy? Is your hospital system website mobile friendly? Your community should view your hospita...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs