Future of Healthcare Delivery: Strategies that will Reshape the Healthcare Industry Landscape

Healthcare is in the throes of great change. And history has shown that large-scale disruption incubates innovation. The issue of balancing affordability and value with respect to health care is to define the dimensions of interest and place them in priority order. Primary focus on optimizing health care allocations and investments, notwithstanding, the real purpose is to maximize health. Quality health care is essential - as it is a critical element in enhancing the health of the population. Other priorities include value - getting the best, and the affordability - not spending too much. There is a need to build a stronger healthcare delivery system rightfully led by primary care that seeks to remain cost conscious, efficient in its delivery, and fairly compensated for helping people attain a healthy life. Healthcare is in the midst of transformational change in the way it is financed. Rising health care costs, the new approach to cost containment (which asks individuals to pay more for their own health care) is going to lead to tiering, in which those with higher incomes will be able to afford a wider range of health care services than those with lower incomes, and growing number of elderly people, suggesting a rapid increase in funding for long-term care and the development of alternatives to nursing home, new and reemerging infectious diseases, rediscovery of lifestyle-related health issues (smoking, obesity, diabetes, cancers) and the advances in technology. Consumers are expecting higher levels of quality. Service industries have moved toward data-driven methods in which they closely monitor their processes for anomalies, the response has to be more efficient systems with fewer errors. But the pace in Health industry is slow. New drugs and devices meant that people are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, but the health care experience has become complex. Hospitals and health systems will face ever more pressure in next few years to establish the core skills needed to thrive in a rapidly changing healthcare market. Healthcare leaders continue to put infrastructure and governance practices in place to support value-based models even as providers still have significant fee-for-service revenue. Health organizations that are shifting to value-based models must contend with the realities and limits of their local economies, the strategies of large employers for reducing their healthcare costs, concentration of the payer market and physician practice alignment. Health systems with cash reserves and strong margins are better positioned to make investments that are related to. Investments that can supplement declining revenue from payers can include ambulatory care centers, telemedicine, business software development and pharmaceutical research. These developments point towards opportunities for improvements in the delivery of health care. The building block is operational efficiency, such as optimizing staffing and managing the supply chain efficiently. Changing the way care is delivered with the right providers at the right place at the right time, reducing unnecessary services and focusing on value is essential for the survival in the competitive market. This paper focuses on health transformation, technological advances, health economics, health insurance, universal health care and future trends in healthcare delivery system.