Ensuring healthcare workers’ resilience and welfare was a key concern among C-suite health executives during 2022. But as the impact of the height of the coronavirus pandemic continues to ebb, workforce resilience has dropped as a cited challenge, from 77% in 2022 to 61% in 2023. And, initiatives centered around staff recruitment and retention slipped from 61% to 55%.
Financial concerns such as sustainability and lowering the total cost of care have jumped to the fore, merely by maintaining the percentage of executives citing them. These two challenges were mentioned by 69% of surveyed executives in both 2022 and 2023, according to The New Healthcare C-Suite Agenda: 2024-2025, a report from Baltimore, Maryland-based healthcare advisory firm Sage Growth Partners.
Just as the coronavirus lingers, concerns about its impact still weigh on industry leaders. In 2023, 43% mentioned access to care as a challenge facing their industry, up from 24% a year earlier.
The base mission of healthcare organizations has become more difficult. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents indicated the health of their patients is worse than before the coronavirus pandemic — a sentiment up from 52% in 2022, as patients return to the healthcare system and longer-term ailments, or conditions ignored during the various shutdowns are manifested. Only 5% of those surveyed believe patients have caught up with care that was put off during the height of the pandemic.
Healthcare executives are increasingly turning to digital health solutions to support patient care. As patient care backlog starts to clear and management moves from being reactive to proactive, five patient-facing initiatives received more attention in 2023 than in the previous year. Specifically:
* Focusing on improving clinical efficiencies rose from 44% to 69%
* Increasing access to care jumped from 22% to 62%
* Patient engagement concerns rose from 46% to 66%
* Patient safety issues increased from 37% to 60%
* Preventing avoidable readmissions increased from 34% to 51%
Other data collected offer a reminder that those surveyed are managers first and foremost. Asked during 2023 about their top strategic priorities during the next two years, 57% indicated growing revenue was among their most important strategic priorities, up from 42% a year earlier. Reducing costs (such as slowing the use of more-expensive agency-supplied staff) increased from 38% in 2022 to 46%, while patient and consumer experience dropped to 25% from 36%.
At a higher-view level, 44% of those surveyed indicated delivery of care is their highest investment priority during 2024-2024, while just more than one-third (34%) rank new markets or revenue streams as a high priority and 27% anticipate investing in back-end processes and systems.
Telehealth will likely play an increasingly important part in cost reductions and patient throughput. During 2023, more than half — 53% — of respondents anticipated an increased focus on this channel during the next 12 months, up from 44% in 2022. Some 50% said remote patient monitoring would get more attention, up from 23% in 2022. C-suite executives acknowledged that telehealth utilization has dropped compared to its use at the height of the pandemic, but anticipate that use of this channel will increase, if not completely match previous lofty levels.
The study was based on a survey of 108 health system and hospital C-suite executives. A full copy of the report is available here: https://bit.ly/3wyndSL
