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Medtech Business Review | Tuesday, August 06, 2024
The healthcare industry has long been referred to as "recession-proof." Since 2020, the pandemic's economic shocks have placed a great deal of strain on health systems as they have dealt with an increase in patients, a shortage of personal protective equipment, a quick transition to telemedicine, rising wages, and a labor shortage.
Fremont, CA: Reports indicate that during a period of severe financial instability, larger health systems with stronger assets and larger cash reserves made better pivots than others and increased their investments. According to a new McKinsey & Co. analysis on the future of U.S. health care post-Covid-19, as we recover from the shock of the pandemic, the market is changing to accommodate patients' health journeys, leading to greater affordability, quality, access, and experience.
A healthy cash position enables health providers to staff ambulatory sites and support their operational initiatives as they continue to invest in providing treatments outside of the traditional hospital setting.
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Bringing services nearer to patients
According to McKinsey, the pandemic hastened the shift in healthcare from expensive acute and post-acute facilities to less expensive freestanding and non-acute facilities. This has resulted in a rise in the demand for home-based services and virtual care. In order to provide outpatient treatments closer to patients, health systems all over the nation are also spending millions of dollars to construct ambulatory centers.
Ambulatory care is expected to grow at the quickest rate and have the largest profit margins within the healthcare business as it develops. According to Precedence Research, the market for ambulatory surgery centers is projected to reach $152.6 billion by 2030, increasing at an annual growth rate of 6.4% starting in 2022.
Continuous expenditures for telemedicine and technolog
Technology is essential to the modernization of the healthcare sector, both in terms of administrative and clinical aspects. According to McKinsey's report, advances in clinical approaches and technology—including new developments in anesthesia and pain control as well as minimally invasive surgical procedures—are enabling a number of procedures, like tonsillectomies and knee replacements, to move into the ambulatory setting. Health, wearable technology for health monitoring, and digital women's health are further areas of growth.
Shifting paradigms and growing expenses in staffing
According to NMS Health, a national administrator of workplace health screenings and programs, "the demand for health care staffing and traveling nursing companies has exploded during the pandemic in order to meet the staffing needs of health care facilities.
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