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Reducing Uncertainty: Insights from Navigating a New Reality

By The SHSMD Team posted 09-29-2020 03:55 PM

  


The COVID-19 situation is full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (a combination often referred to as VUCA). During the recent Navigating a New Reality virtual conference from SHSMD and the AHA Center for Health Innovation, health care strategists learned how to reduce uncertainty about consumer needs and preferences and about economic instability.

Monitoring the Consumer’s Pulse

Understanding consumer data and applying it to organization and business unit strategy was critically important before the pandemic. Today, it’s imperative to achieve growth, noted Northwell Health’s Jeff Kraut, vice president of strategy and analytics and a recipient of SHSMD’s Leadership Excellence Award.

Through consumer surveys it conducted every two weeks during the pandemic, the New York-based health system learned:
  • Where patients were in their care journey.
  • Key demographics.
  • Health status and history.
  • How they wanted to engage with the health system.
  • Economic impact of COVID-19 on their finances.
  • Their emotional state.
  • Attitudes toward getting medical care and medical distancing.

The Digital Front Door

Northwell learned that its digital front door will be a critical success factor, with telemedicine being the first stop for many health care interactions. Northwell Health is seeing increased acceptance of new home-based and post-acute care models. Now, it’s also looking into how to redeploy the Northwell workforce into virtual care in the home. Recognizing that it can’t do this alone, it plans to establish a platform to turn separate services, technologies, solutions and data into a continuous care experience for the consumer.

It’s Not Just About Digital Health

Northwell also realizes that bricks and mortar health care facilities must change as well in response to COVID-19 and the new consumer mentalities and expectations it has created. Vital success factors include rethinking the way patients:
  • Access medical buildings and offices.
  • Register for medical services.
  • Move through the health care system.

Other important factors include:
  • Considering how patients’ disease states should affect their path through the system.
  • Meeting consumer preferences in how they want to be engaged.

Widely Varying Financial Outlooks

In another session, consulting leaders from Oliver Wyman noted that hospitals and health systems are rebounding financially from the worst impact of the pandemic as patients have begun to return for non-emergency surgeries, diagnostic tests and other services that they postponed during the first six months of COVID-19. However, there’s a long way to go to reach a state of normalcy. They expect wide variability in financial outlooks in 2021 depending on providers’ ability to effectively manage cash liquidity and capital, reduce costs and to address regional spikes in the virus and workforce reduction moves by major employers in their region.

Recommendations for Reducing Uncertainty and the Impact of Uncertainty

As for how to deal with these greater levels of financial uncertainty, the speakers offered these five recommendations:
  • Make decisions today to consider a range of potential outcomes, with a clear view of epidemiological and economic scenarios. 
  • Rapidly refresh results with the latest information and changing outlook. Use real-time tracking/monitoring to address rapid changes.
  • Test the impact of deviations in assumptions in areas like consumer demand while always linking back to the business impact.
  • Create a governance playbook and response framework, pre-agreed upon by executives, on actions for worst-case scenarios.
  • Effectively respond to heightened attention and inquiries from senior leadership, board committees and external stakeholders.

More Resources for Uncertainty

For more, recordings of the Navigating a New Reality sessions will be available soon for $49. Watch for details in early October.

In addition, be sure to sign up for the all-new SHSMD Connections Bytes, to be held October 27-28 and available on demand afterward. This dynamic online event will include pre-conference workshops on scenario planning and concurrent sessions that will feature using digital marketing to respond to the unplanned, winning the modern health care consumer, and health care marketing in the “real time” age.

This post drew from the analysis by the AHA Center for Health Innovation’s Market Scan article, “Four lessons for navigating a new reality.”
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