Trends to Watch in 2024

The past year has proven to be difficult for many medical groups and health systems, yet I predict a stronger, more robust care delivery sector in 2024, as medical groups and health systems reorganize around confronting their ongoing challenges. Many care delivery organizations will begin the year with some true strengths, including more powerful data systems, aligned leadership, a stronger focus on workforce retention and well-being, and support from their Boards to make tough decisions. Care systems also often have strong community ties and the necessary infrastructure to scale and innovate. As healthcare systems look ahead to 2024, here are some of the major issues they will face.

Access to Care: Demand for in-person care will continue to skyrocket, while lagging productivity, mainly due to staffing shortages, will limit the number of available appointment slots. This gap in access will be felt acutely in primary care and behavioral health, with new patients having difficulty securing an appointment. With an aging population and an increasing number of people with mental health issues or one or more chronic conditions, this imbalance between demand and supply will persist for years. Novel solutions will include proactive care management, attempts to redirect visits to virtual or asynchronous models, and the increased use of remote monitoring. In addition, systems will look to create partnerships with disruptors like Walmart or Amazon OneMedical to offload some of the demand.       

Innovation and Automation: Artificial or augmented intelligence (AI) is certainly the buzz in healthcare, and we will continue to see more applications in care delivery. More health systems will adopt ambient AI for note and order creation. I also see increased use of automation to help make the office visit more efficient, including more online scheduling, pre-visit check-in and information collection, and referral management. Billing and collections will also see improvements, with more automated processes for prior authorization being deployed in partnership with health plans. In-basket management will be front and center for many providers, and AI use will be expanded to triage and respond to patient inquiries. 

Financial Risks: Medical groups, hospitals, and health systems will continue to face numerous financial risks in 2024. Expenses will continue to increase including supply costs, pharmaceuticals, and especially labor. Reimbursement rates from government and commercial payers will remain constrained, resulting in declining operating margins. Administrative burdens related to billing and insurance issues will continue to increase, and limits on productivity due to staffing shortages will temper growth. Yet, healthcare providers will adapt with growth in profitable service lines, increased effectiveness of their revenue cycle processes, and improved efficiency of hospital and clinic operations. We also may see consolidation of leadership roles to decrease administrative overhead. 

Workforce or Operational Efficiency: Doing more with less will become the new norm. Care teams will be expanded to relieve physicians of certain tasks, which will necessitate changes in workflows and additional responsibility for non-physicians. For example, advanced practice practitioners will continue to expand their roles within the office and hospital settings. Virtual nursing will be introduced into more care settings. And community care workers will become a more integral part of the care team, addressing social drivers of health. More training programs will be initiated to develop the internal pipeline of clinical and non-clinical workers.    

The coming year will be full of promise and risk, as medical groups and health systems confront complex and system-wide problems. Leaders will need to unify and align their physicians, clinicians, and entire workforce around the required changes. It will not be an easy year, but I do think healthcare leaders are up to the task. 

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