Major Trends and Challenges in the Healthcare Industry

The United States has a complex healthcare system and medical documentation has become more strategic and imperative with the introduction of the electronic health record. Medical documentation contains details about an individual’s health history and other clinical data that are important from the point of view of optimal care. At present, EHR-integrated medical transcription services are providing valuable support to physicians in meeting their heavy documentation needs efficiently.

Trends

To meet the rising needs of the patients, cut down costs, stay competitive and create a patient-centered experience, the healthcare industry is adopting new technologies. Digital technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing, and nanotechnology are the future of healthcare industry. According to IMEG Corp and Transwestern, shifting the emphasis to prevention, health preservation, early intervention and person centric approaches are the main factors that drive the need for building effective value-based healthcare model.

Let us look at some of the major trends and challenges in the healthcare sector, as outlined by Transwestern Senior Vice President DainaPitzenberger, in a cpexecutive.com article.

Major Trends in Healthcare

  • Virtual health is a major development in the healthcare industry. Wearable devices to advanced cloud to radiofrequency identification are some of the advancements that help to improve healthcare quality and build a good patient-doctor relationship. With artificial intelligence, handheld medical equipment and digital pills, doctors can provide better treatment for patients. Hospitals are now forced to meet the new regulations and codes to ensure a better patient experience. Hospitals are being measured for satisfaction and the results are posted for the public to stay compliant with payer regulations. Poor satisfaction directly impacts reimbursement.
  • Another trend is that the healthcare industry is realizing that patients, just as other business consumers, are expecting a greater user experience like that provided by Amazon, Google, Uber etc. The healthcare industry is watching other organizations in the hospitality, retail, wellness, and entertainment sectors, and many major insurance providers have started acquiring physician practices. Hospitals should be watching this new trend.
  • Another emerging trend is a change in the medical office building – it has more collaborative space, built-in technology, less waiting room area, smaller overall facilities, shared physicians’ office and education training space.
  • Home healthcare is a trending set-up. It aims at moving more services to outpatient and telemedicine delivery. This helps to cut down costs; moreover, healthcare is now moving closer tothe patient’s home. Home healthcare emerged due to better reimbursement and efforts to prevent readmission. Hospitals are preventing reimbursement losses by paying for home healthcare and telemedicine care.
  • The biggest opportunity for the healthcare industry is to completely disrupt the current model and put the patients at the center of their focus. Another opportunity for the healthcare industry is to lower the turnaround time and also enhance the efficiency of patient visit and their interaction with physicians.
  • Advanced technology can be used to diagnose patients prior to symptoms and integrate retail, leveraging data. New technology tools will facilitate partnership with non-healthcare sector firms, and also enable providing medical services closer to patients’ facilities rather than making the patient come to them.

Challenges

The main challenges the healthcare industry is facing are meeting various regulations, obsolete facilities, services that are not reimbursed and keeping up with the technology. Even today, there are a group of providers who still believe that patients need to come, wait to see the doctor face-to-face and move from location to location to see various specialists. But this is not the future. The healthcare industry has to focus on improving the patient experience with home healthcare, e-health, telemedicine and other innovative solutions.

The key requirement for providing better patient care is error-free medical documentation. For hospitals to implement the latest technology, they require flawless medical records. For efficient and timely medical documentation, the ideal option is to hire a medical transcription service company that can offer error-free and accurate medical records. They use advanced technology and equipment that ensure speedy transcription of dictated medical notes. The services are cost-effective and will bring increased profitability to your healthcare organization. Physicians and other healthcare professionals will no longer have to spend valuable time on documentation tasks and instead focus on giving better patient care.

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