by Mark Garver May 22, 2022
Healthcare providers are rapidly deploying a variety of technologies to improve care and help drive down costs, but will patients see lower costs, or just improved services. In the United States 58% of community hospitals in the United States are non-profit, 21% are government-owned, and 21% are for-profit. Setting aside the non-profit, for-profit argument for a moment, that majority of healthcare providers have seen shrinking margins over the past few years and certainly the COVID pandemic hasn’t helped.
The most patient-facing benefit of Health Tech is improved services, such as telemedicine, appointment scheduling and other forms of remote care. These are also significant drivers in lowering the operating costs for healthcare providers. Additional benefits include more accurate treatment/diagnosis and patient selection for clinical trials.
The bottom line is we are unlikely to see a cost saving to patients any time soon from these technologies, but there is still a benefit to both patients and healthcare professionals.
