The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch
The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch brings healthcare strategy professionals into the room with leading health system executives to explore how innovation, clinical leadership, and enterprise strategy intersect. Designed for strategy executives, physician leaders, and healthcare innovators, the podcast offers actionable takeaways to help organizations drive both clinical and financial impact.
The Strategy Catalyst Dispatch
The Strategist in Brief: January 16, 2025
This episode covers insights from the 2024 Fall CFO Forum, where 41 health system CFOs discussed priorities now closely aligned with strategy leaders, including workforce strengthening, care delivery efficiencies, and improved access, along with debates over hard versus soft ROI measurements for AI deployments. The episode also covers Amazon One Medical facing a wrongful death lawsuit that could impact consumer perceptions of their healthcare brand, and includes 2025 healthcare predictions from industry leaders about increased M&A activity, rising healthcare misinformation challenges, and growth in tech-enabled benefits platforms.
Testing, testing, testing, testing, testing. This is the audio version of The Strategist in Brief for January 16th, 2025. For this week's Key Market Dive, we collected our favorite insights from the 2024 Fall CFO Forum held last November in Phoenix, Arizona. We convened 41 health system CFOs to discuss their financial and management challenges. CFO priorities are tracking more closely with strategy leaders. In the Academy's 2025 Priority Survey, CFOs said their top three priorities are strengthening the workforce, efficiencies for care delivery, and improving access, putting them in close alignment with CSO priorities. In a session led by a former leader for Google's Innovation Lab, CFOs discussed out of industry lessons on how to cultivate an internal culture of innovation. Among other principles, CFOs discussed setting clear stop criteria that determined when to pull the plug on an underperforming pilot. CFOs also debated how to measure a return on investment when deploying new AI technologies. There was a mix of systems that now want hard ROI versus those prioritizing more difficult to quantify soft ROI, like improved staff recruitment and retention. While payers have taken greater initiative in deploying AI for revenue cycle management, Many leaders see a sizable opportunity to take advantage of AI for mid cycle operations. Other sessions focused on how ambulatory sites of care are dominating capital expenditures and exceeding already high revenue expectations. CFOs discussed how tight inpatient capacity is incentivizing additional outpatient spend, even at the risk of cannibalizing volumes. Lastly, CFOs discussed how their systems can prepare for future crises, especially cybersecurity and political change. In a group discussion, one CFO warned that the expansion of Medicare Advantage, potential changes to the 340B program, and the looming threat of site neutrality legislation could create another pandemic like scenario for health system margins. And now, our first market scan. Amazon One Medical is facing a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of a patient who passed away after allegedly seeking a video consult from a One Medical provider. If the case impacts consumer perceptions of One Medical's brand, that could be problematic for Amazon, given that they've leaned into this brand name for their broader suite of healthcare offerings. Health systems with One Medical partnerships should be vigilant for the possibility of inappropriate triage by virtual providers, especially as Amazon seeks to centralize efforts for greater cost efficiency. One Medical's push for profitability could put additional strain on their providers, and the company has already faced similar complaints over the use of call centers for One Medical seniors patients. For our second market scan, we've collected some of our favorite predictions for healthcare in 2025. PwC forecasts that a more favorable regulatory climate, falling interest rates, and a robust pipeline of deals could drive greater merger and acquisition activity in 2025. Scan group president and CEO Sachin Jain forecasts that the ongoing rise of alternative health movements and increasing misinformation on social media will create a crisis of trust for traditional healthcare providers. Hospitality's Blake Madden predicts that new tech enabled benefits platforms will continue to attract attention from employers, and that ICHRAs will continue to grow the non group health insurance market. That concludes this week's Strategist in Brief. Be sure to read the full version on the web at hmacademy. com. Thanks for listening!