CEOs to Focus Their Innovation Efforts in Five Areas

Signs of a subsiding pandemic are all around us, but the need for innovation has not slowed. If anything, it’s accelerating. As health care leaders look to build on recent successes, many are taking stock of their innovation priorities and ways to meet rising consumer expectations.

Nearly 93% of CEOs say the pace of innovation has accelerated over the past year. Examples of pandemic-induced innovation include expanded virtual care services and new hospital-at-home programs, according to Modern Healthcare’s quarterly Power Panel survey. Providers also became more effective in how they connected and engaged with patients through the use of chatbots, patient portals and texting campaigns.

Calculating the degree to which some of these changes may become permanent is difficult, but leaders expect that telehealth will account for between 11% and 25% of all patient visits after the pandemic subsides. Patient demand for remote care and generally high satisfaction levels with their telehealth experiences during the pandemic have created new expectation levels in this area.

5 Innovation Areas Needing the Greatest Attention

Health care CEOs ranked the following areas as needing the most innovation:

• Clinical practice.
• Consumerism.
• Workflow.
• Payment models.
• Interoperability.

While health care organizations can control how they practice and make access to care easier for consumers, spurring innovation on payment models will require greater cooperation and movement within the payer community. When payment models reinforce keeping patients well, innovation will follow, Marc Harrison, M.D., president and CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, believes.

Even with some of the great innovation successes in health care during the pandemic, challenges remain. Culture is the No. 1 threat to innovation, cited by 74% of CEOs, followed by staffing and recruiting at 28%.