Though hospital finances recovered to some extent by the end of 2020, the industry is not out of the woods yet. However, with strategic investments, especially in outpatient care and technology, hospitals and health systems can help buoy their finances in this challenging time, industry observers said.
Patient volumes have fluctuated wildly after the Covid-19 pandemic hit as Covid-19 patients flocked to hospitals and those needing or seeking elective surgery and other care staying away. Not surprisingly, this has had a significant impact on health systems’ financial health.
But outpatient settings and digital solutions offer some revenue-generating opportunities for hospitals.
“A number of the major players and some of the bigger regional systems in the country now are in a place where they get more of their revenue from the outpatient side as opposed to the inpatient side,” said Dr. Sanjay Saxena, global healthcare leader, Payers, Providers, Health Care Systems & Services and managing director at Boston Consulting Group, in a phone interview.
In fact, outpatient care was the only healthcare setting that saw an increase in patient volumes in 2020. Though emergency department visits and inpatient volumes were down from July to December last year compared to the same period in 2019, outpatient volumes actually increased by 5%, according to a report by consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion.
Healthcare providers that have well-established and expansive outpatient and ambulatory care businesses will be able to weather patient volume trends better in 2021 than those who do not, said Saxena.
Take HCA Healthcare, for example. The Nashville, Tennessee-based healthcare giant’s revenues jumped to $14.2 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $13.5 billion in the same period in 2019. HCA’s ability to move care outside of the inpatient setting to the ambulatory environment really helped their financial performance, said Saxena.
On the other hand, smaller and more rural hospitals, which depend heavily on ED and inpatient care, may face a challenging year, he added.
Another key investment for hospitals will be in digital solutions to help them manage the ups and downs of patient volume.
“Resilience as a broad topic for provider executives is absolutely top of mind,” said Gurpreet Singh, health services leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, in a phone interview. “And resiliency can be achieved in a number of different ways. One way is [figuring out] — can you predict demand a little bit better?”
Patient demand forecasting solutions will be popular, with 74% of health executives recently surveyed by PwC’s Health Research Institute saying their organizations would invest more in predictive modeling in 2021.
Further, hospitals will see savings in some unexpected places. For example, with an increasingly remote and mobile healthcare workforce, hospitals may see cost savings on real estate and facility leases, said Singh.
They can use these savings to invest further in telehealth and at-home care programs to expand care outside of the four walls of the hospital, he added.
The industry has to come to terms with changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the shifts in care delivery and patient preferences.
“Some of these things are structurally significant changes,” said Saxena. “Organizations ignore these things…at their peril. Some leading organizations and systems will find a way to embrace [these changes] and leapfrog others in the market coming out of 2021.”
Photo: claudenakagawa, Getty Images
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