What if a Black Swan Swims in Next Year?

As the year draws to a close, we encourage clients to quit looking in the review mirror and the distorted funhouse mirror and start looking at crystal balls.

Some organizations bounced back from COVID, but many did not. Those who had formulated a clear strategy that included scenario testing emerged better prepared for an extremely rare and unpredictable occurrence that had severe consequences and a major impact. But many did not. The medical community continues to feel devastation.

In 2025, we will face the challenges we have always encountered, but new ones are bound to occur. What can we do to prepare for the likely and unlikely future?

1. Addressing the workforce shortage will continue to create challenges in 2025. Research indicates that more than 6.5 million U.S. healthcare professionals will permanently leave their positions by 2026, while only 1.9 million will step in to replace them – leaving a national industry shortage of more than. Top performers know their value and will demand better pay.

2. Baby Boomers retiring and others leaving for more money create problems, but so does burnout. The National Academy of Medicine reported that between 35% and 54 % of U.S. nurses and physicians exhibited symptoms of burnout, characterized by stress, fatigue, cynicism, and a low sense of accomplishment. The clarion call among those who find themselves emotionally exhausted continues to be: “Hire more people!”

3. In 2025, healthcare executives will be forced to modernize and adapt to make supply chains more robust. This means implementing five overarching strategies:

o Creating greater diversity of supply sources and moving away from just-in-time ordering

o Digitizing and automating operations to provide more real-time visibility

o Implementing medical inventory management software to track and organize inventory needs, quantities, and locations

o Automating procurement processes, including electronic data interchanges (EDI) for order tracking, deliveries, and confirmations

o Utilizing cloud-based supply chain management systems, which can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance security

4. That brings us to technology. 2025 promises to be a year of widespread technology implementation that will reengineer healthcare delivery. This year’s changes will shepherd in profound effects that will alter healthcare into the next decade.

Although we can’t know for certain exactly how all these will play out, one irrefutable fact remains: It will cost money. How can executives who already feel the financial pinch prepare for these challenges?

Because the pandemic created a budgetary crisis, AI has become impossible to ignore. Healthcare executives are looking for new ways to improve quality, reduce unnecessary costs, increase efficiencies, avoid adverse outcomes, and reduce labor costs. Widespread implementation of AI in the next five years will result in significant savings to make all that happen.

But there are things you can do right now, too: improve clinical documentation, have a clean claim rate that is at least 90%, don’t let denial rates exceed 8%, and make physicians partners in formulating strategy.

If you’d like to enhance the images you see in the crystal ball and prepare for the black swans, we can help. Email us at www.henmanperformancegroup.com