The health system is facing a difficult financial future as labor costs soar and the population ages, demand is increasing and hospitals have fewer resources to serve them, panelists at the Conference & HIMSS 2023 Global Health Expo said.
Kaveh Safavi, senior executive director of healthcare at Accenture, fears access will become a much bigger issue. While he hopes that technology like next-generation AI can ease some of the documentation and administrative burdens on vendors, that future may not come anytime soon.
“I really think technology will give us the answer. I’m not sure we can take advantage of it as quickly as we need to,” he said.
Cris Ross, chief information officer at the Mayo Clinic, said he thinks technology like ChatGPT will gain traction, but he’s not ready to roll it out yet. For one, technology sometimes confidently spew out misinformation.
And he argues that many health systems simply won’t be able to take advantage of the technology.
“I think for many, many health systems whose IT department is the call to their EHR provider, they don’t have the money to invest in sophisticated technologies,” he said. “And it’s going to have to be super-sized companies that can support them because they can do everything at scale.”
Larry Leisure, founder and chief executive officer of Chicago Pacific Founders, said rising healthcare costs could be on the horizon soon. Employers simply cannot push costs on their employees anymore.
“For all low- and middle-income workers, they can’t afford deductibles and coinsurance,” he said. “And so the notion that we’ll be able to make some additional cost changes is very questionable.”
Steven Nelson, president of Contigo Health, said the industry regularly talks about how patients act more like consumers, but many don’t care much, only checking their interests at the last minute.
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to refresh consumers and get them interested unless they’re chronically ill and that makes sense, unless they have a substance use disorder problem, unless they diagnosed or had something with their family member,” he said. “I just think it takes something else to get people to sit at the table. Even in this conference, are we really, really committed in our interests to reducing that need? I I don’t know if we will.”
But Safavi argues that the idea that healthcare needs can easily be prevented is a “fascinating myth”. Many diseases are caused by genetic and social factors, and it will be difficult for the health care system to address some of the nation’s biggest public health concerns, such as violence. firearms.
“These things are incredibly complex. It’s a combination of genetic and environmental factors that happen in a certain order. Making good life choices may or may not work,” he said. “There’s so much going on, it’s getting harder and harder for me to have faith that just living a good life is enough.”
