A recent survey from Sage Growth Partners, a business management consultant company, highlights how hospital and health system leaders are focusing on strategic initiatives to tackle ongoing workforce shortages and reduce costs in the next year.
"The New Healthcare C-Suite Agenda: 2024-2025" report surveyed more than 100 C-suite executives and focused on topics like digital tools, EMR optimization, patient publication, operations, and more. Of the respondents, 29% held a CEO title, 13% chief medical officer, 10% CFO, 10% CIO, 10% COO, 7% chief nursing officer, 6% chief quality officer, 3% chief strategy officer, and 2% chief digital innovation officer.
Here are some key findings from the report:
- For top strategic initiatives for executives, 57% said growing revenue, 55% said staff recruitment and retention, and 46% said reducing cost.
- Sixty percent of executives felt an economic recession is likely, with a whopping 81% expecting it to impact their organization negatively. In preparation, 52% of respondents said they're reducing costs by improving efficiencies, with 42% reviewing suppliers to find where they can place limitations.
- Coming in at 60%, EMR optimization was the top technology initiative for executives. However, only 24% reported EMRs living up to vendors' promises "very well," and an even fewer 17% strongly agreed their existing EMR meets their requirements moving forward.
- Forty-five percent said integrating AI and clinical workflows led to data quality and accessibility improvements. Twenty percent of executives said this integration created regulatory and legal issues, and 71% felt it's too early to tell if AI will lead to revenue or cost-savings.
- Up from 52% in 2022, 65% of executives said patient population health is worse than pre-pandemic levels.
- Regarding value-based contracts, 29% of respondents said they're aggressively pursuing them, 52% are keeping existing levels, and 44% have over 20% of revenue in risk-based arrangements.