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"Technology and consumer interests will collide in the home with billions on the line for progressive healthcare players." -- Forrester Senior Analyst Liz Boehm, author of Who Pays For Healthcare Unbound at the TCBI Healthcare Unbound conference.
"Clients are beginning to integrate credit report data checks into their registration process in real time, further debugging the revenue cycle."
-- SearchAmerica President and CEO Dan Johnson in "Hospitals, Armed With Data, Ask For Cash Upfront"
1. Six Technologies Underpin Healthcare Interstructure
2. Forrester's Top 10 Healthcare Predictions For 2004
3. Healthcare: How Right Were We In 2003?
4. Who Wants Consumer-Directed Health Plans
5. Benefits Portals Don't Deliver On Their Potential
Want to understand consumers better? Based on 250,000 completed surveys each year, Forrester's Consumer Technographics provides insight into how consumers think, buy, and act. We collect data about sources of health information, use of 20 primary health plans, 24 different medical conditions -- and all of this data can be cut against our data about technology adoption, device ownership, and online behavior. Learn more by contacting Ryan McPadden at rmcpadden@forrester.com.
The 2004 Forrester Consumer Forum will teach healthcare companies how to extend brands across digital and physical channels, reinvent product and service design, and use new technologies to deliver breakthrough experiences for the hard-to-pin-down digital consumer.
Join us and Aetna's John Rowe on September 19-21, 2004 in New York, N.Y.
Dendrite's Pharma CRM .NET Play by Liz Boehm
Hospitals, Armed With Data, Ask For Cash Upfront by Eric Brown
Physician Web Sites: Not Much There by Eric Brown
2004 Hospital IT Spending Catches Up by Eric Brown
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The $34-Billion Market For Healthcare Unbound
It's the season for summer blockbusters, and we have written our own to heat up your plans for the next decade. Healthcare Unbound -- technology in, on, and around the body that frees care from formal institutions -- will be a $34 billion market by 2015. The baby boomers' inexorable aging and this protest generation's desire to maintain their autonomy will fill the coffers of medical device manufacturers, remote health service providers, and home networking vendors. Third-party reimbursement will stoke the fire in 2010, bringing home health monitoring to assist seniors in the activities of daily living, provide remote care and behavior modification for those with chronic conditions, and move acute post-hospitalization care from the antiseptic hallways of hospitals to the comfort of home, without sacrificing quality of care.
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Physician Groups Use The Web -- But Just For Brochureware
Forrester conducted usability reviews of 41 California group practice Web sites and spoke to group practice executives hanging out their shingles online. The sites' content reflected execs' expectation that sites save administrative staff time and phone calls by providing office location, directions and hours, as well as physician bios and specialty information. A number of sites invested in third-party syndicated health content from vendors like Salu and MyHealthZone, but almost none took advantage of the Web to automate transactions, even those as simple as Rx refills or appointment requests. A shortlist of simple changes that will pay off in improved site usability: List non-English languages spoken by group doctors, include metatags with the practice name and affiliated medical institutions so search engines return the URL, post directions for taking public transportation to the office, and ensure that navigation elements are consistent and completely expose the site's content.
Dendrite Goes .NET
Dendrite recently announced that it is transitioning to the flexible and extensible .NET platform. Future product releases will take full advantage of the suite of Microsoft development and runtime services -- from database abstraction to extensions based on Web services. New features will be deployed as .NET objects and plug-ins that enhance a flexible, metadata-driven application core. These changes will simplify application integration within Dendrite's suite of pharma apps and with third-party apps.
SearchAmerica: Hospitals' Antidote To Uncompensated Care
Charity care, bad debt, and the growing ranks of the uninsured mean that hospitals can't afford to lose traction with their revenue cycle. The American Hospital Association estimates that uncompensated care comprised 7% of hospitals' total expenses in 2002. To help hospitals predict which patients will pay their healthcare bill, SearchAmerica's Payment Advisor checks a patient's insurance eligibility, generates a healthcare credit score, applies provider-specific business rules, and returns to the hospital a recommended action. Hospitals may then request partial payment at discharge or send the bill directly to a collection agency. If hospitals save the time and effort of repeatedly sending bills, they can turn administrative resources to creating a uniform discounting model for the uninsured and matching qualified patients with federal, state, and private funding sources.
Hospital Spending On IT Favors Mobile Technologies
The hospital IT decision-makers who responded to Forrester's Business Technographics April 2004 North American Benchmark Study are optimistic about the healthcare industry business climate, and growing budgets prove it. Hospitals expect to spend 5.5% of their budgets on IT in 2004, finally bringing their IT spending, as percent of revenue, up to levels that rival other industries. Hospitals' investments will favor mobile technologies like handheld devices for personal information, medical reference material, and clinical apps.
We are very interested in your feedback on our research. Do you have topics to recommend, data you would like to have, or technologies you want assessed? Drop me a line at bradholmes@forrester.com so we can connect.
Brad Holmes
VP and Research Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences
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