Three trends we expect to see at MGMA 2024
“Shaping Tomorrow Together’ is the theme of this year’s MGMA Leader’s Conference, scheduled for October 6-9 in Denver, CO. Here’s a look at what we anticipate will be the top three trends driving conversations at this year’s event:
- Leveraging digital health to transform patient care delivery and clinician workflows
- Utilizing data to improve patient care
- Making use of data to improve medical practice operations
Leveraging digital health to transform patient care delivery and clinician workflows
Digital transformation has been a leading topic of interest in healthcare for several years now. Digital health is a natural evolution of that effort and has become a subject of interest for the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). In early August of this year, the FDA announced the industry experts that will sit on its Digital Health Advisory Committee (DHAC). The FDA established the DHAC to consider this topic and related issues, and to solicit views from technical and scientific subject matter experts from diverse disciplines and backgrounds.
The DAHC’s purview is to inform the FDA “on considerations for digital health technologies such as AI/ML, virtual reality, wearables, digital therapeutics, and remote patient monitoring. DHAC will also weigh in on issues like decentralized clinical trials, patient-generated health data, real-world data, real-world evidence, and cybersecurity,” according to Fierce Healthcare.
Jennifer Zelmer and Aziz Sheikh, and others, in this peer-reviewed paper, noted that, “... greatly accelerated use of digital health in areas such as public health surveillance and virtual care in many countries highlight some of the many ways in which digital health can strengthen and enhance health care planning and delivery, as well as enable safer, higher-quality care.”
Utilizing data to improve patient care
There is growing momentum for the application of data analytics in healthcare. In fact, some 60% of healthcare executives use healthcare data analytics in their organizations. Of those, 42% saw improved patient satisfaction. Healthcare data analytics proponents posit that proper application of this data can help to deliver better services and improve patient outcomes. This trend is still evolving, as the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) asserts that data diversity, regulations and policy changes will need to be employed to deliver truly unbiased analytics.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to flourish, empowered by a surge of artificial intelligence tools, healthcare organizations (HCO) will be able to gather more diverse data from a wider range of sources. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Digital Health Institute (DHI) refer to this trend as “swarm-ilization” which they define as the ability to accommodate high-speed feeds coming in from thousands of new and disparate sources. This, in theory, will allow healthcare organizations (HCOs) to cultivate richer, more profound data insights.
Care at home, which is fueled by secure data transfer, offers potential advantages to the appropriate patient. An increasing number of HCOs are offering acute care at home, and doctors leading those programs say they are impressed by how patients are responding. Key technologies that enable this include remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, and support for enhanced clinical team coordination and supply chain management.
“Hospitals and health systems cannot afford to continue investing in ‘legacy’ networking technology in today’s digital-first environment,” says Andrew Craver, Vice President of Segment Marketing for Spectrum Enterprise. “By simply maintaining the status quo with respect to IT infrastructure, organizations risk losing their competitive edge.”
Using data to improve operations
In 2022, the healthcare industry’s financial health was under considerable cute strain from labor shortages, inflation and COVID-19. In 2023, HCO profits continued to face substantial pressure due to inflation and labor shortages. Estimated growth was less than 5% from 2022 to 2023, again, below pre-2021 levels. In response, HCOs have undertaken major transformation and cost containment efforts.
In 2024, these factors have eased. Even so, HCO margins are lagging their financial performance relative to pre-2021 levels. On the operations side, overhead costs and readmissions can be reduced by proper application of data. For example, American Hospital Association data shows that providing care at home can cost approximately 40% less than an equivalent hospitalization and reduce 30-day hospital readmission rates.
Fortunately, HCOs CIOs do not have to go it alone. There are AI systems designed to guide decision-making that is tied to operational and clinical goals, from better efficiency through billing automation to increased patient engagement through personalized outreach.
How Spectrum Enterprise can help
For more than 10 years, we have partnered with 115,000+ healthcare organizations to provide technology and communication solutions. We understand that as a healthcare professional, your goal is to improve health outcomes and clinical and patient experiences — all while lowering costs.
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