Healthtech Amidst Chaos
Wherever you turn inside the healthcare industry there’s no shortage of speculation and second-guessing about the future…about what’s next? Whether payer, provider, pharma or consumer, questions abound: What’s next for Obamacare? What will be the Trump-Price effect? Was Value Based Care just a fad? Is MACRA still alive? Are pre-existing exclusions coming back?
And one of the biggest questions is will all this uncertainty slow down innovation and inhibit future investment in healthcare technology?
While there’s an abundance of unknowns looming, one thing is certain: sweeping health system change – whether financing, care delivery or government programs – isn’t around the corner. The machinery of big government, legislative and regulatory, moves at a deliberate, if not glacial pace. And while political rhetoric and grandstanding will shape headlines, “reform redux” or an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid will be years in the making. Unfortunately, the daily deluge of political pomposity around healthcare has the average consumer confused and often scared.
Remember the “Day One” promise - on the first day of my Presidency I will repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with…something better, or more specifically, something terrific. “Repeal and replace” has morphed into “repeal and repair”, which many now say is more likely to be “repeal and rename”. In any case, policy wonks agree that a new healthcare reform 2.0 will stretch implementation over 3 to 4 years as components of the Affordable Care Act are phased-out or modified and new (or rehabbed) components are phased-in. However, realists across the country know that a modicum of bipartisanship would go a long way toward a win for all healthcare consumers…improve ACA through smart, targeted legislated fixes and modifications.
So back to that critical question: will all this uncertainty slow down innovation and inhibit future investment in healthcare technology? No!
Given the current direction of the health care industry – increased coverage for millions of Americans, shift from volume to value-based health care, sophisticated technology to support both efficient care delivery and consumer decision-making, new convenience-driven remote and mobile health outlets – there’s a new baseline and more importantly, there’s momentum! Entrepreneurs have always led the way in healthcare innovation and they won’t let up anytime soon. It’s the innovators, risk-takers and rule breakers that are making stunning advances in cancer, Alzheimer’s and preventative treatments, and they’re the ones breaking down barriers with artificial intelligence and cognitive computing for diagnostic accuracy and precision medicine.
Success in transformative, threatened markets such as healthcare requires an ability to anticipate and absorb change, generate disruptive ideas, and act with sequenced urgency. Innovators question legacy assumptions, disruptors challenge institutional bias, and visionaries force debate around longstanding approaches to problems and even their solutions. This is the way entrepreneurs discover and invent, manage through obstacles, capture opportunity and change markets. Entrepreneurial spirit will triumph over the bureaucracy.
WEBINAR
2017 Healthcare Trends on March 14th COMPLEMENTARY REGISTRATION
