While it’s likely to be some time before we know the full extent of the devastation caused by the current coronavirus pandemic, it will be without question historic.
Even more, the post-COVID-19 recovery is expected to alter the landscape further for U.S. healthcare providers, who were already navigating shifting trends heading into 2020 and are now straining under the financial and clinical pressures of caring for the more than 2,400,000 — and counting — coronavirus patients to date. Is your practice or ambulatory surgery center prepared?Contents
Great Recession lessons?
Officially, the economic recession spurred by the financial crisis lasted for 18 months, from December 2007 until June 2009. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate peaked at 10% in October 2009, a few months after the contraction ended.8 As a result, the rising unemployment rate edged the healthcare industry closer to a crisis that had been many decades in the making: Rounds of corporate layoffs grew the ranks of the nation’s uninsured, which peaked at nearly 46.5 million people — nearly 18% of the population — in 2010.9 After growing from $4,145 to $7,624 in the decade leading up to Great Recession, per capita healthcare spending held steady around $8,000 annually between 2007-09, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.10
The Long View

7 Various.
8 https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm
9 https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/
10 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/#item-nhe-trends_total-national-health-expenditures-us-billions-1970-2018

Trends to watch
Telehealth
Healthcare Access
Outpatient Care
Consolidation - Accelerating Pressure on Independent Providers
Outpatient Care
Procedures performed in ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) have increased 50% since 2005, according to an Advisory Board study.17 There are many reasons for that jump, but a primary reason is cost. Medicare pays about half for a procedure performed in an ASC rather than a hospital outpatient department, saving the federal program more than $2 billion annually.18 With COVID-19-related healthcare costs expected to exceed $550 billion in the next two years, policymakers likely will look to proven lowercost settings like ASCs to balance the books.19
Spotlight On Cardiology

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