The New Healthcare Truths of 2022

The following is a guest article by Mike Noshay, MSE, Founder and Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Verinovum.

This time last year, we healthcare leaders were excited to be looking ahead to 2021 and leaving 2020 firmly behind us. But our dreams of putting the pandemic in the past were put on pause. Now, as we look ahead to another new year, we wonder: will 2022 bring positivity, innovation, and transformation?

At Verinovum, our SWAT (Strategic Workforce and Tactics) team has once again consulted their proverbial crystal ball and have made some predictions about what healthcare can expect over the next 12 months. In no particular order, here are our top 10 new truths for 2022:

1. Telemedicine will become a more mainstream way to interact with healthcare professionals.

Telemedicine’s popularity will continue to rise as better technology delivers benefits for both providers and patients. Lower costs for delivering telemedicine will be a driver for payers and providers, while convenience and easier access to services will continue to appeal to patients. Infrastructure and technological understanding remain barriers for mass adoption, but a recent survey by Rock Health reported that while racial disparities had been a concern in the past, “Black, Hispanic and other non-white adults were more likely than white adults to use telemedicine.”

2. Cyberattacks will increase in frequency.

For all the positives, the pivot to telehealth as a result of COVID also opened the door to an increase in cyberattacks across the global healthcare market. The ongoing adoption of telehealth to capture, share, and store data, combined with the growing political unrest in the world and an accelerated integration of the Internet of things (IoT), make it inevitable that attacks will continue to rise in 2022. A recent report estimates that the global healthcare cybersecurity market could reach $24.56 billion by 2026 as a result.

3. Healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse cases will continue to rise.

As more health systems turn to telehealth for services, there will be an increase in fraud, meaning compliance will become a significant issue. Patients are becoming savvier healthcare consumers and will be “provider shopping” to get the treatment they need. Unfortunately, disparate and disconnected systems could result in an increase in duplicate and unnecessary lab tests, imaging, and other procedures.

4. There will be heightened focus on fixing unstructured data due to the valuable data that is stored incorrectly in fields.

One of healthcare’s most pressing needs is the ability to comprehend and make sense of all the data in a patient’s chart – including both structured and unstructured data. While structured data (checkboxes, drop-down menus, etc.) are important, more often the nuance is captured in an unstructured form. Clinician notes, for example, require manual capturing, abstracting, and reporting, which can lead to errors or mistypes, ultimately harming patient outcomes.

5. More diagnoses of chronic disease.

With fewer in-person PCP visits, patients miss more routine, preventive screenings. As a result, there will be an increase in new chronic disease and cancer diagnoses that weren’t caught early. As providers continue to struggle with significant resource and staffing constraints, the financial strain on providers and payers will be worse than ever.

6. Value-based care will grow and value-based payment models (VBPM) will continue to expand.

Providers continue to embrace value-based care, and the pandemic seems to have accelerated this. However, the intersection of inflation and delayed care will push healthcare as a whole to closely monitor and try creative ways to achieve better patient outcomes. Accurate data will be extremely valuable in helping inform care models that help patients at every stage of their journey.

7. FHIR initiatives will persist but lag in value and patients will start engaging with their data.

While Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) are designed to be quick to learn and implement, patient adoption of the data access protocols baked into FHIR will initially be slow. The first patients that see significant discrepancies in their data (because of incomplete data or poor quality) may be disappointed and not find the data useful. They may even lose trust in the industry’s ability to safeguard their data.

8. CMS will continue its focus on fusing clinical and claims data into a genuinely interoperable state.

Healthcare continues to generate nearly incomprehensible amounts of patient data points, while payers, providers, and patients still struggle with its quality, usability, and interoperability. We anticipate that questions will continue to arise about how to improve data quality so that it can be more useful to healthcare as an industry.

 9. Intelligent devices and IoT will contribute to a more holistic public personal health record.

Smart devices, wearables, and home health monitors will play a more prominent role and capture more data that can be shared to ensure better quality and more proactive health outcomes. Increased availability and adoption of the technology in other categories, such as lifestyle and security, will mean device costs will continue to fall and technology will be less intrusive and easier to integrate into everyday life.

10. Social determinants of health (SDoH) and health equity will become more important.

While healthcare disparities existed long before COVID, the global pandemic has underlined the need to acknowledge their presence and act upon them. Focusing on health inequity, SDoH, and expanding services are all significant real-world challenges that can–and must–be addressed.

What do you think healthcare will look like as we embrace the new year? If data quality challenges are one of your biggest concerns, please visit www.verinovum.com to learn how to enrich your clinical data through enhanced curation and collection.  

About Mike Noshay, MSE

As Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Verinovum, Mike is responsible for all prospective client interactions, including client success and support, strategic planning, marketing, and business development.  Mike has an extensive background in finance, business, and entrepreneurship. He was previously Director of Business Development & Innovation for Oklahoma’s Health Information Exchange, MyHealth Access Network, and is also a former Teach for America Corps member. Mike is recognized in the healthcare and IT industries for his creativity and entrepreneurial development expertise. He is skilled in opportunity recognition, idea creation and implementation.

About Verinovum

Verinovum is a market leader in clinical data curation and enrichment, enabling payers, providers, and partner organizations to improve operating performance and quality with actionable data. By delivering clean, complete, and accurate data, Verinovum supports healthcare organizations in their efforts to access the right information, in the right format, at the right time, so it may be tailored and curated to fulfill specific use cases and achieve mission-critical clinical and business goals. Discover more at Verinovum.com.

   

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