Becker’s Hospital Review
July 17, 2017
By Laura Dyrda
One hundred years from now, hospitals will be nearly unrecognizable as care moves to the outpatient setting and organizations integrate artificial intelligence, telemedicine and other IT applications to care for patients outside the walls of their institution.
Forty-five healthcare executives, including five from hospital C-suites, describe the key trends disrupting the traditional hospital and how institutions can prepare for the future. Regardless of perspective, the key trends arising in their responses time and again include:
- Reserving hospitals for truly acute care patients
- Monitoring patients at home with telemedicine applications
- Retail clinics and the rise of consumerism
- Designing the process for enhanced patient experience
- Collaboration between all stakeholders to improve health
Here is what 45 healthcare executives had to say about the hospital of the future. Responses are organized by category — hospital CEOs and executives, physicians, health IT leaders, consultants and healthcare firms and organizations — and in alphabetical order within each category.
Responses have been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Healthcare companies & firms
Andrew Selesnick. Shareholder in Buchalter's Litigation and Health Care Practice Groups (Los Angeles): "The hospital of the future will, on the outside, look similar to what we have today. On the inside, however, it will be much different. Academic centers and well-established hospitals surrounded by large populations will predominately provide treatment for the most complex, difficult and unusual cases, while suburban and community hospitals will handle the management of the follow up, rehabilitation and chronic phases of a patient's condition or disease.
The specialization of hospitals and the physicians who staff them will accelerate. Technology will continue to dominate medical treatment and breakthroughs, and use of telemedicine will increase as hospitals struggle to employ the specialists they need, particularly for rural and community hospitals. As the healthcare model slowly moves away from fee-for-service reimbursement to value-based reimbursement, big data will become increasingly important to coordinate the continuum of patient care while simultaneously measuring outcome across a broad spectrum of key indicators."
Source: Becker's Hospital Review
