Provider consolidation among healthcare trends to watch, blog says

As part of Healthcare Design’s annual Corporate Rankings Survey, the magazine asked readers about the climate of the healthcare market in 2013. According to a blog by Jennifer Kovacs Silvis, managing editor, there were still a lot of unknowns. Respondents had questions on what the post-reform environment would mean for healthcare organizations’ capital budgets and how that would effect architecture, engineering and construction firms.

"Advisory firm The Camden Group’s Steven Valentine wrote his “Top 10 Healthcare Trends to Watch in 2014.” It provides a good perspective on healthcare as a business, and inspires some thinking about how these conditions will touch our healthcare design space. Of the 10, here are four I found particularly worth noting and how I think they might affect the A/E/C community," Silvis wrote.

1. “New care and payment models will continue to develop and expand”— Valentine says to expect a trend toward shared savings, or rather incentives for physicians based on lowering cost and improving quality and patient satisfaction.

2. “Consolidation of providers will continue … the big will get bigger”— The pressures of reform and the shift to a value-based business model will likely be too much for some organizations, and Valentine projects we’ll continue to see plenty of mergers and acquisitions.

3. “Expect continued deployment of new technology” — With a push toward population health management, Valentine says systems will be focused on telehealth, e-visits, mobile apps, data storage, etc. 

4. “Health systems and hospitals will continue to expand their continuum of care within their market” — The expansion of ambulatory care services isn’t going anywhere, Valentine says. 

Read the blog.