As practice leaders of Kaufman Hall’s Strategy and Business Transformation practice, we help our clients make their most pressing strategic decisions every day. We’re pleased to welcome you to our Strategy Spotlight blog, a space where we intend to regularly share our insights—and those of our colleagues—on the evolving challenges and opportunities healthcare organizations are confronting.
For instance, we recently explored our perspectives on the promise of healthcare strategy for determining an organization’s direction—with the end goal of achieving long-term success in an unforgiving industry.
Within the historical context of mission-based, not-for-profit healthcare, health systems have not always grappled with the hard choices—preferring to attempt to be everything to everyone. However, we are observing that the unprecedented challenges of recent years are compelling organizations to pivot away from an “all of the above” approach and start to confront the existential questions that can help determine their future strategic direction:
Relative to our competition….
- Will we provide better services to our consumers?
- Will we provide the highest value to our consumers?
- Will we be the easiest healthcare provider for consumers to use?
After we published our recent article, we heard from several health system CEOs saying that our observations really resonated. One health system leader told us they planned to use the framework with their physician leadership to highlight the way health systems must be thinking in this new era. Another leader concurred with our argument that organizations that might have been able to delay defining a unique strategy in the past are no longer able to avoid these discussions and must face them head on.
The challenges and decision points that today’s healthcare leaders face include determining whether or not to remain independent; adjusting to a marketplace after 10 years of disruption from newer, retail and tech-savvy entrants to the industry (many of whom are currently facing existential challenges of their own); navigating complex relationships with payers; and more.
Future editions of this blog will take a deeper dive into these and other key strategic questions facing healthcare organizations. We also have many recently published resources that are foundational for these discussions.
Along with several of our colleagues, we recently published a three-part series in The Governance Institute exploring the strategic landscape for providers after several years of turbulence, the evolution of the board’s role in strategy, and key considerations as organizations consider organic and inorganic growth strategies.
Our colleague Joyjit Choudhury’s Payer Perspectives blog covers similar issues with a spotlight on the issues keeping insurers up at night—from the impact of Medicaid redeterminations to the future of Medicare Advantage—and what they mean for providers.
We encourage you to subscribe to this blog and stay tuned to this space for upcoming blogs from both of us and our Strategy and Business Transformation team. And if you have a question or idea for a future topic, please email us at dclarin@kaufmanhall.com and asteele@kaufmanhall.com.
