Most health system executives will agree: this pandemic has made an already tough situation worse. According to a 2018 BCG report, around 50% of US hospital capacity had a negative operating margin. Health systems were facing financial insecurity long before COVID-19, mainly from the twin pressures of declining reimbursement rates and rising operating costs.
Unfortunately, the end of the pandemic might not mean the end to providers’ financial problems. With elective surgeries postponed during COVID-19, revenue projections for this year have dropped sharply; there are estimates that about 25% of rural hospitals are at risk of closing due to financial strain. To simply stay solvent, many hospitals have found themselves faced with the decision to lay off front-line workers at a time when they are needed the most.
As the country begins to normalize and we begin exiting our first post COVID-19 peak, leaders at hospitals will have to start facing some tough decisions. The stimulus bills passed by Congress have helped, but not enough, and at best hospitals will currently recover only a fraction of the costs they have incurred. Based on recent figures from the American Hospital Association hospitals stand to collectively lose $202.6 billion through June. Last month (April 2020) has been one of the worst on record for hospital finances: operating margins plummeted almost 300% compared to the same period last year. The solutions for hospitals in the past have always been operations focused: opportunities around system efficiencies, revenue cycle management, and value-based care to improve cost-savings. New challenges require new approaches, and we at OMNY Health™ feel there is an important untapped channel to explore: leveraging data to create new opportunities for healthcare systems.
Over the past two years, our team at OMNY Health have worked with some of the largest health systems in the country to operationalize their data assets and drive new innovations in the life sciences space. In partnership with our team, these providers have taken control of their data’s destiny via our secure, compliant, and friction-less platform. Via OMNY, our health system partners have turned their latent data assets into a means to support patient care and clinical innovation. In this current crisis, every healthcare organization needs to explore new options to stabilize their future – our nation’s health care infrastructure depends on it.