It’s no surprise that top concerns among health system CEOs continue to be implementing population health and value-based care, and maintaining or improving margins, according to a recent article by Deloitte.
As healthcare providers transition from a volume to value-based model, evaluating whether the service lines you offer match the medical needs in your markets and whether to add or remove service lines or realign staff has never been more important.
Additionally, evolving technology and changing consumer behavior are forcing health networks to quickly adapt or risk losing patient volume for more advanced providers. This has put pressure on facilities and networks to better understand their offering, the competition, and overall populations of their markets. Thanks to patient analytics, uncovering service line opportunities, optimizing your operations, and improving patient acquisition doesn’t need to be a mystery.
What Is Patient Analytics?
Patient analytics, similar to consumer analytics, provides healthcare organizations with a snapshot of the lifestyle behaviors of patients. It allows you to create detailed patient profiles that provide an overview of proclivity of a patient type in a certain region. You may find that your local market has a high propensity for cardiac care, but low need for pediatricians, or that many of the potential patients in your area may need orthopedics or geriatric care, and reduced need for internists than previously thought.
Why Do You Need Patient Analytics?
Demographics of a market have helped drive strategy for many facilities and networks, but this information should serve only as a starting point for service line optimization. Patient analytics takes a deeper dive into your network of existing and prospective patients in each market to help you better understand your patient populations and uncover gaps or oversaturation in service areas.
How Patient Analytics Can Support Your Service Line Growth.
The first step in growing assets through service line optimization is by assessing your existing and potential patient profiles within local populations. Through a patient analytics evaluation you will uncover where your existing service line needs are and where there is potential opportunity for expansion into new service lines as patients evolve throughout the lifecycle of care. A McKinsey report finds that “choosing the right service lines to emphasize requires a superior understanding of a hospital’s economics and competitive environment.” Fortunately, addressing where and what to focus on can be answered with patient analytics solutions.
Whether you’re in the planning stages of service line growth, or evaluating existing service line models, patient analytics for service line optimization can help you address strategic initiatives such as:
- Identify areas for growth by service line.
- Reduce costs at existing facilities.
- Improve asset utilization ratios.
- Drive new patient volume and increase marketing ROI
Identify Areas for Growth By Service Line.
Using the power of analytics in your strategic planning you can gain valuable insights into where there are pockets of opportunity to increase patient volume. Analytics will provide you with a comprehensive look at your most profitable patients and help you create a plan to enhance delivery of care through a patient-centric strategy.
Through service line optimization you can identify markets that may have high demand for a specific service line, forecast the potential of those service lines based on populations, and determine additional service lines that may also be a fit for new or existing locations, or identify which to avoid.
Reduce Costs at Existing Facilities.
Patient analytics can go beyond expansion opportunities, and can better help guide your operations at existing facilities. With analytics, you can go beyond demographic information to better understand the needs and opportunities of your markets.
Need to improve underperforming facilities? Conduct an analysis of the nearby market to determine which service lines are most in demand, and which are the most profitable. You may find the pediatricians office is in the wrong location, and would be more profitable at a different facility, while that same location could be a hot bed for cardiovascular care.
Demographics alone do not tell the whole story. Leverage patient analytics to truly understand your network and identify gaps and opportunities in service line offerings to increase patient volume.
Improve Asset Utilization Ratios.
Improving margins is constantly top of mind for any organization. Thanks to patient analytics you will have the insights to improve asset utilization ratios through increased efficiencies and be able to decrease the cost to acquire and retain patients. Patient analytics will give you the ability to match facility offerings with population need so you can quantify investments by forecasting demand by service line at each location. Don’t leave these valuable financial decisions to chance.
Drive New Patient Acquisitions and Increase Marketing ROI
The same intelligence that will help your facility identify service line opportunities and expansion or reduction can also support your marketing initiatives. Now that you’ve uncovered areas of opportunity based on market potential you can use these insights to target potential patients by service line with targeted marketing.
Cost of Not Taking a Service Line Approach.
Whether you are looking to improve or expand on existing facilities and operations, analytics can give you information you need to maximize your investments for the long-term.
Watch our webinar, “Maximizing Assets: Getting the Most Out of Your Existing Facilities,” to learn more about optimizing service lines using patient analytics.