A Look Into Healthcare’s 2024 Crystal Ball: What Industry Analysts Predict

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Many of the challenges that healthcare organizations faced in 2023 – inflation, labor shortages, worker burnout, and narrow margins – are likely to persist in 2024.

These factors are certain to make for a challenging operating environment, and most healthcare executives are taking a clear-eyed, creative look at how to overcome these looming barriers over the next year—including the use of novel health tech and medtech.

Only 3% of health system executives and 7% of health plan executives report having a “positive” outlook for 2024, according to Deloitte’s annual “Health Care Outlook Survey.” Those numbers are down substantially from the prior year, when 15% of health system executives and 40% of health plan leaders reported positive outlooks.

Nonetheless, healthcare organizations will no doubt continue to invest in new technology solutions to surmount many of the operating obstacles that are confronting them. But which technologies are likely to deliver the biggest impact in healthcare in the next year? I wanted to hear from the experts, so I polled a number of my contacts in the healthcare analyst community. Below are their predictions.

  • Jennifer Eaton, RN, MSN, CCDS, CRCR, research director, value-based healthcare digital strategies  with IDC, notes that key industry players will continue to invest in digital solutions that support operational efficiency, optimized value, cost containment, and patient-centric care.

“This year will usher in an evolution in value-based care initiatives (i.e., reducing health disparities, accurate predictive analytics, AI-supported workflows, and hyper-personalized engagement strategies) that are especially appealing as payers and providers aim to strike a balance between the cost and quality of care,” she said. “As healthcare organizations continue to face a variety of challenges such as inflationary pressures, labor and skills shortages, clinician burnout, and evolving consumer expectations, organizations are focusing on digital transformation and digital infrastructure creation that supports automation, deeper intelligence, and real-time insights that can minimize the drudgery and low-value work that has plagued the healthcare industry and shift this valuable time and attention to the patient.”

  • While much of the industry’s focus in 2023 was on the challenging operating climate for hospitals and health systems, payers will face similar obstacles next year, according to Jeff Rivkin, research director, payer IT strategies, IDC.

“Payers face payer-provider convergence, care delivery modernization, digital business expectations, and adopting a unified healthcare experience in 2024, on top of mandates around price transparency and prior authorizations,” Rivkin said. “It’s hard to make money only being a health insurance company, so creative innovations and business models will thrive to address cost-of-care, labor shortages, and legacy technical debt.” 

  • Since the emergence of Chat GPT, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been among the hottest topics in health IT, as well as executive suites across nearly all industries. As generative AI models mature, healthcare organizations will increasingly look to implement them, according to Delfina Huergo Bensadon, senior research and consulting analyst, Frost & Sullivan.

“One of the digital health trends we are seeing at Frost for 2024 is the increasing adoption of generative AI in healthcare organizations, as the physician’s main concern of accountability is addressed globally through regulations, such as the AI Act,” she said.

  • Elena Iakovleva, research analyst, Chilmark Research, foresees increasing investment in AI-based technologies to improve both patient care and healthcare administration.

“Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) solutions will definitely be on the rise,” she said. “Often the accuracy of existing monitors isn’t that good (Hi, Apple Watch and friends) and without a doubt in 2024, major RPM vendors will be competing for the best data available to train their models.”

Additionally, AI will continue to transform providers’ approach to revenue cycle management (RCM), according to Iakovleva. “We have been observing tremendous growth of various RCM-oriented AI technologies,” she said. “In 2023 it feels like we hit a critical mass and by the end of 2024 we should start seeing a big change in RCM departments across the U.S. and professions associated with RCM.”

  • John Moore III, managing partner, Chilmark Research, foresees increased emphasis on the importance of healthcare organizations addressing patients’ social determinants of health needs. 

“We will see the first ‘backbone’ organizations funded by federal grants connecting with care organizations to create closed-loop referrals to community-based organizations,” Moore said. “Safety-net and capitated hospitals already piloting ‘food pharmacy’ and other healthcare-related social needs initiatives will receive federal funding for these programs via new community-benefit designations.”

Of course, we already know what the biggest news story of 2024 is bound to be – the presidential election – and healthcare, as usual, is sure to play a role.

“With the 2024 election looming, both parties will step up pressure around reigning in healthcare costs and system abuses to win points with the electorate,” Moore said.  

The Taco Bell Times And The Depends Undergarments Press: Is This The Future Of Local News?

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The sad state of local news in the U.S. is hardly news to anyone who has spent time in public relations and journalism.

News outlets across the nation are continually going out of business, creating “news deserts” where communities are largely devoid of any reliable sources of credible information.

Though often overlooked, local news outlets can be valuable resources for public relations professionals and their clients. Whether they are general interest dailies, weeklies, or business publications, these media outlets are often interested in milestone topics that don’t necessarily appeal to trade or national media, such as hiring plans, headquarters’ expansions, acquisitions, and other factors that may affect the local economy.

Over the last 15 years, ”the local news crisis has metastasized like a slow-moving cancer coursing through the bloodstream of enclaves from suburbia to rural America,” as a recent report on the state of local news from Northwestern University’s Medill School so eloquently phrased it.

The report is full of stark and sobering numbers and facts. For example:

  • The nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005
  • An average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week in 2023
  • Roughly half of all U.S. counties are now only served with one remaining local news source — typically a weekly newspaper
  • Most communities that lose a local newspaper typically do not get a replacement, even online

The decline of local news should be concerning for anyone who cares about democracy, good governance, and public accountability. Why? Studies have shown that the decline in local news has increased political polarization, led to more political corruption, and let outlets that spread misinformation fill the void, the AP reported.

Indeed, this dearth of reliable, community-level information “poses a far-reaching crisis for our democracy as it simultaneously struggles with political polarization, a lack of civic engagement, and the proliferation of misinformation and information online,” the Northwestern report states.

Wealthy corporations to the rescue? What could go wrong?
Against the backdrop of this escalating existential crisis for local news, I was interested to read a proposal by marketing thought leader extraordinaire Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, who suggests that newspapers should follow the model of sports teams selling stadium naming rights to private companies.

Pulizzi throws out the example of his hometown Cleveland Plain Dealer, struggling with a barely there print product and less-than-attractive website, selling its naming rights to local megacorporation Progressive Insurance. Pulizzi notes that Progressive pays $3.6 million a year for the naming rights for the Cleveland Guardians’ stadium, while it spent $1.37 billion on advertising in 2022, so another $3 million to sponsor a newspaper represents the equivalent of loose pocket change for the insurance giant.

It’s an intriguing idea and one that we could see experimented with around the country, though as Pulizzi correctly notes, “A key challenge in making this concept a reality is ensuring mutual expectations are met for the businesses receiving such subsidies.”

Ahh, yes, there’s the potential problem. In other words, what kind of deference might Progressive’s executive suite and board of directors expect from The Progressive Plain Dealer when they object to the tone of its editorial coverage?

Corporate sponsorship would create a minefield of ethical challenges for journalists, the communities that rely on them for information, and corporate executives. If the past is any indication, this will not end well for journalists and their communities.

In my decade or so of experience as a business journalist one thing became abundantly clear: People who have accumulated a substantial amount of wealth, power, and influence will virtually always use that wealth, power, and influence to further their own interests. In a sense, they can’t help themselves. What’s the point of rising to power if you can’t use that power?

So, returning to the Progressive Plain Dealer example, what happens to the outlet’s news coverage when Progressive suffers an embarrassing public relations gaffe? What if the CEO’s country club buddy gets popped for a DUI? What if a political candidate the CEO is personally backing is shown to have used campaign funds to pay hush money to a porn star?

In all these scenarios, and countless others we could imagine if we took the time, I would virtually guarantee you that Progressive would use its funding, and the threat of revoking it, to try to slant the news outlet’s coverage in a way that is more favorable to Progressive’s viewpoint and business interests. The community would sense and suspect this, damaging the Progressive Plain Dealer’s credibility with its readers, and potentially plunging us back into the local news crisis all over again. Alas, cash rules everything around me, as some wise philosophers once reminded us.

Nonetheless, I applaud the creativity in seeking out solutions to the local news dilemma and may soon have little choice but to welcome our new corporate news overlords.