In a 2015 trends piece, Strategy& stated that they strongly believe that there is a need for stronger-form healthcare products — procedural, acute, chronic, or long-term care offerings that change the way healthcare is delivered, financed, and consumed. The accountable care organization (ACO) construct, which reimburses participating providers for achieving quality and cost objectives for a defined Medicare population, has not generated sufficient improvements in care transformation or patient engagement.

Indeed, the Pioneer ACO program has lost 40 percent of participating hospitals. Health systems that are continuing with the ACO construct are realizing that changes have to be more than skin-deep. Meanwhile, productized or bundled healthcare — in which a patient pays a single fee for all tests and treatments related to a condition or procedure — is gaining in popularity. A recent Strategy& survey found that about 30 percent of the large health systems and innovative employers are pursuing bundled care and another 50 percent are interested in the concept.

Their article says that we are witnessing the evolution of a new healthcare marketplace, offering a range of solutions that combine care and financing. It will be more competitive and more transparent, and ultimately shaped by the shifting of risk to providers and consumers, and the addition of retail channels for care and financing. This marketplace will deal in population health solutions combined with a range of acute, chronic, and long-term products.

This infers better planning analytics tools and the better decisions that grow out of a planning and investment process built from strong, comprehensive data.

In a blog post late last month, Perficient shared with industry readers the dire need for mapping a process that quickly makes the transition from a fee-for-service model to a value-based care model and that requires healthcare organizations to re-evaluate their technology and in most cases invest in new solutions.

They accurately pointed out that population health management is now a focal point for organizations amidst the changes in the delivery model and payment reform and that hospitals and health systems are learning to rely on technology to transform data into meaningful information that outlines the characteristics of their population and identifies high-risk patients in order to manage chronic diseases and deliver enhanced preventative care.

One of the biggest challenges for healthcare organizations is the shear amount of data they have to manage. Internal and external, disparate data sources that reside in silos make it nearly impossible to generate a complete picture. Bringing this data together to deliver a 360-degree patient view is critical for population health management, operational performance and enhanced patient care.

A centralized data warehouse houses data from across the enterprise and provides healthcare teams with a complete view of all of their patients and allows them to better manage the individuals and populations they serve. When internal and external data, including claims, are located in one repository, key stakeholders can generate meaningful and actionable insights to improve operational performance and enhance patient care.

These industry sources make it clear that we now know the “what” to do. Is there the available talent to take that “what” and turn it into “this is how we do it”? Learn more about what you can do to accelerate your transformational planning analytics decisions.