The U.S. population is expected to grow significantly in coming decades. Expanding infrastructure won't be the only answer for dealing with this boom — having the right IT systems in place will help.
Sanjeev Agrawal, CMO and president of healthcare for LeanTaaS in Santa Clara, Calif.: There are 320 million people living in the U.S. today and 1.1 billion patient visits to U.S. hospitals each year. It is projected there will be 120 million more Americans by 2050, and healthcare needs to prepare to handle that increase in visits. The percentage of Americans over 65 years old will be 50 percent higher and one out of two Americans will be treated for a chronic disease. By 2025 there will be 30 million more people covered by the ACA. There is no way we can add 50 percent more infrastructure to support them all — there is a lot of operational optimization that can and needs to be done. Hospitals and healthcare providers have to quickly learn to do more with less. Better patient flow, scientific scheduling and more open systems will help.