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The Health Research Institute of PricewaterhouseCoopers provides new intelligence, perspective and analysis on trends affecting all health-related industries, including healthcare providers, pharmaceuticals, health and life sciences and payers.
A sustainable framework for achieving transparency in the health industries
Transparency is having a transformative effect on the health industry. The following report: Seeing is believing: A sustainable framework for achieving transparency in the health industries, looks at transparency from three separate viewpoints: the health industry, government and non-health sectors, such as transportation and financial services. Understanding the power of transparency from these different viewpoints will be important as organizations traverse the future.
Acts of charity: Charity care strategies for hospitals in a changing landscape
Hospital charity care provides millions of the uninsured with free care but courts, government regulators, and community leaders are now questioning the value that society derives from this community benefit. This comprehensive report examines the developing charity care issue, and how hospitals are reporting and providing charity care. It also provides strategies for succeeding in this evolving environment.
Behind the numbers: 2007 medical cost trends for employers
Medical costs are expected to increase by double digits in 2007, but these costs are impacted by various inflators, like cost-shifting, and deflators like cost-sharing. This report details expected increases in various benefit designs, including consumer-driven health plans.
Behind the numbers: Healthcare cost trends for 2008
The nation's employers can expect a return to single-digit increases in health benefit expenses in the year ahead. Unlike health plan premium forecasts, medical cost trends reflect the underlying numbers for actual medical costs by plan design. They are used by private insurers and employers to compare health plan costs year over year, ultimately to set premium levels and design the benefit packages that will be offered to employees in the fall.
Behind the numbers: Medical cost trends for 2009
From one year to the next, healthcare costs for employers and their workers always go up. Yet, for the past five years there's been some positive news. The growth rate has been dropping. However, that trend will level off in 2009, according to employers and health plans. The new Health Research Institute (HRI) report, "Behind the numbers: Medical cost trends for 2009", addresses the cyclical nature of the healthcare industry and provides insights into the conflicting factors that are contributing to both cost increases and savings. See
Behind the numbers: Medical cost trends for 2009.
Beyond the sound bite: November 2007 review of presidential candidates' proposals for health reform
Healthcare is one of the top domestic concerns in the upcoming presidential election. The current health care system is not built to last, and the 2008 presidential election is poised to see a significant push for major health reform. The direction it goes depends largely on the next President.
Closing the seams: Developing an integrated approach to health system disaster preparedness
A disaster occurs every week in the US, and the numbers are increasing. Yet despite increased federal and state funding since 2001 and lessons learned following 9/11 and natural disasters like large-scale hurricanes and floods, disaster planning in the healthcare arena remains sporadic, disconnected and under-funded. PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute's (HRI's) "Closing the Seams" analyzes preparedness throughout every key element of our healthcare system, identifies gaps, and highlights emerging solutions and innovative best practices that can be leveraged to make the most of our resources and help those in the emergency response and healthcare communities deliver the best healthcare possible in the face of unknown disasters.
Creating a climate of innovation: The health industry's most challenging paradox
Innovation is one paradox of healthcare - tremendous strides forward within a system that overall doesn't work well. Can innovation transform healthcare? The annoyingly complex answer is that it does and it doesn't. Effective incremental, sector and local innovations are everywhere, but the breakthroughs that would make the entire health system workable remain elusive.
HealthCast 2010: Smaller world, bigger expectations
Consumerism, E-business and genomics will be the disruptive drivers of this decade, according to this 1999 global research report that included a mix of policy makers, health system executives, employers, physicians, insurers and medical supply vendors from the U.S., Europe, Canada and Australia. This report looks at those disruptive drivers and the way they'll affect providing and paying for healthcare in the future.
HealthCast 2020: Creating a sustainable future
In this groundbreaking report, HealthCast 2020, the Health Research Institute looks at solutions and responses from around the world to the globalization and industrywide convergence of healthcare. What insights, best practices and policy lessons can be learned from experiences in various countries to create a globally sustainable health system? Who, or what, is driving the solutions?
HealthCast tactics: A blueprint for the future
Building on HealthCast 2010, this 2002 report recommends tactics that successful health systems and payers should consider employing over the next three to five years. Among the tactics are pay-for-performance, predictive modeling, and renewing capital plants, all of which are strongly affecting the industry today. The report draws on a survey of more than 650 top executives of hospital systems, payers, governments, medical supply vendors, physician groups and employers.
Keeping score: A comparison of pay-for-performance programs among health plans
In order for providers to improve quality and make sustainable changes in the delivery of care, they must have specific incentives to do so. Pay-for-performance programs are an important tool to link financial payment with quality improvement. If P4P is to succeed in significantly moving the needle on quality, we ultimately need an all-payer approach, wherein providers face the same metrics and incentives for all their patients, regardless of their insurance coverage.
My brother's keeper: Growing expectations confront hospitals on community benefits and charity care
Hospitals don't have the luxury of picking their favorite charity. Charity chooses them. Not-for-profits also have an obligation to provide charity care and community benefit, but the rules are changing. This report looks at a hospital's obligations and makes recommendations for reporting community benefit, pricing services, and structuring business relationships.
Paying for performance: Incentives and the English health system
Many countries are looking at ways to reform their healthcare payment systems around performance. The English system for paying primary care physicians is the only one in the world that bases a significant portion of physicians’ pay on quality metrics. For that reason, this “pay for performance” (P4P) system is worthy of study, and the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute (HRI) report shows what is working well, what needs further refinement and what should be considered when implementing pay for performance methodologies. The learnings from this go far beyond the English system.
Personalized medicine: The emerging pharmacogenomics revolution
The report from PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Technology Centre and Health Research Institute provides insights into the challenges and opportunities afforded by pharmacogenomics.
President Bush's second term: Prescribing private solutions for the nation's healthcare problems
PwC's Health Research Institute developed a comprehensive 360 degree view of President Bush's health plan, the challenges and opportunities for industry, and an analysis of the likelihood of implementation.
Reactive to adaptive: Transforming hospitals with digital technology
Technologically advanced hospitals have greater potential to improve processes and outcome in patient care, reduce medical errors, increase productivity, and compete for market share against other hospitals. The true digital hospital relies on technology as an integral and fundamental part of its business strategy. This report from PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute and the Technology Centre provides the first comprehensive look at the benefits realized by the growing wave of "digital hospitals" across the country.
Recapturing the vision: Integrity driven performance in the pharmaceutical industry
Pharmaceutical companies face increasingly regulatory scrutiny and highly critical media coverage of the industry's R&D, marketing and manufacturing practices. This report explores the reputation issues and compliance challenges facing the industry.
Recapturing the vision: Restoring trust in the pharmaceutical industry by translating expectations into actions
Significant differences between the public's perception of pharmaceutical companies and their own self perception has caused the pharmaceutical industry to lose the trust of its key stakeholders. This report examines those gaps in the areas of marketing and research and development. It also provides recommendations on ways the industry can recapture the reputation it once commanded.
Research rewired: Merging care and research information to improve knowledge discovery
Today's ad hoc methods of managing research information are beginning to strain under increasing demands for new drugs, more personalized medicine, better diagnostic tools, and post-market safety monitoring. This report investigates the benefits, barriers, and emerging approaches to creating an integrated information environment that will help to shape scientific diagnostic, drug, and device discovery in the future.
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Sarbanes Oxley for not for profit healthcare: 2005 update
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed to restore public confidence in the financial reporting of publicly traded companies. One major development in the three years since passage of the Act was recognition that private entities, including not-for-profit health systems, deal with many of the same issues that plagued publicly traded companies.
Tailoring the approach: Employer attitudes and healthcare strategies address distinct issues
Employers must increasingly customize their approaches to providing health benefits to the unique health needs and behaviors of their workforce. Fortunately, a growing number of tools are available to activate employees. Tailoring the right approach may be challenging but not impossible. The results released by PwC's Health Research Institute (HRI) and Management Barometer demonstrate the evolution of employer attitudes on benefit design, consumers and quality.
Take care of yourself: Employers embrace consumerism to control healthcare costs
With double digit health insurance cost increases affecting the business bottom line, employers are turning to consumerism and consumer-directed healthcare to provide a solution. This research report gets behind this trend to find out how employers are coping with rising healthcare costs and the promise that consumerism may bring.
The economics of IT and hospital performance
More than 60 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have made significant enough investments in information technology to begin seeing reductions in operating costs, according to a report on the relationship between health IT investment and hospital operating performance. The report, the culmination of two-years of research, provides the most comprehensive evidence that investment in information technology will improve hospital business performance and that IT capital investment can eventually pay for itself in the healthcare environment.
The price of excess: Identifying waste in healthcare spending
More than half of the $2.2 trillion spent annually on healthcare in the U.S. could be considered wasteful, according to an analysis published by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute. Defensive medicine, such as redundant, inappropriate or unnecessary tests and procedures, was identified as the biggest area of excess, followed by inefficient healthcare administration and the cost of care necessitated by conditions such as obesity, which can be considered preventable by lifestyle changes.
The quality conundrum: Practical approaches for enhancing patient care
This 200-page book is a compilation of thought-provoking essays by PwC and industry experts on quality in provider, payer, pharmaceutical and employer organizations in the U.S. and around the world. It explores the barriers that have made healthcare quality improvements difficult to achieve, and outlines a clear path to progress. Take a journey through the healthcare system from the patient's perspective.
The trends and benefits of providing healthcare quality data
In this latest HealthBrief, PwC discusses the results of a recent survey of top executives at large U.S.-based multinational companies. The focus of the HealthBrief is on healthcare quality data that firms provide to their employees as a way to influence the utilization of healthcare through better education of their employees on cost and quality issues and improvement of their own health behaviors.
Top eight health industry issues in 2008
Health organizations face a pivotal year in 2008 as they anticipate the wildcard outcome of the presidential election. Meanwhile, they must prepare for impending changes — pharmaceutical and life sciences companies are adapting to a new safety agenda from the FDA including the agency's expanded authority over post-market drug safety.
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Top seven health industry trends in '07: A PwC perspective
Obesity is the New Smoking. Consumers Take the Wheel of Consumer-Directed Healthcare. States take the Health Policy Lead. These are three of the top seven trends that will face the healthcare industry in 2007. This report examines these trends and what consumers have to say about them. The research provides a keen perspective for health executives and policymakers as they move their organizations forward.
Trends in IT spending among hospitals
This 2004 Modern Healthcare/PricewaterhouseCoopers IT Survey included responses from 394 hospital CEOs and CFOs revealing how IT spending patterns are changing.
Venture capital investment in health industries report - Q1 2005 results
Investments in health industries accounted for 26% of all venture capital dollars in Q1 2005, according to the MoneyTree Survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association. Health industries investments have been steadily declining since 2000 with a slight increase of 13.5% between 2003 and 2004. In addition, venture capital investments in health and medical companies decreased by 12% from $1.36B to $1.2B between Q1 2004 and Q1 2005.
What works: Healing the healthcare staffing shortage
The federal government predicts that by 2020, nurse and physician retirements will contribute to a shortage of approximately 24,000 doctors and nearly 1 million nurses. Health industry leaders are faced with the challenge of orchestrating care in an increasingly complex and converging healthcare labor market. Seeking solutions means understanding that while the challenges confronting nurse and physician shortages are very different, their roles and futures are starting to converge.
Working towards wellness: Accelerating the prevention of chronic disease
The rising prevalence of chronic diseases is a global issue that affects the productivity and competitiveness of employers. The Health Research Institute partnered with the World Economic Forum on research that examines the impact of chronic disease on multinational employers and recommends a framework for developing, launching and maintaining wellness programs in different territories.
You get what you pay for: A global look at balancing demand, quality, and efficiency in healthcare payment reform
As the pressure to control health spending increases, payers, governments, and providers are compelled to scrutinize the quality and amount of care they'll be able to deliver in the future. Health leaders around the world see the health payment system as one of the best tools in managing this challenge and achieving sustainability. However, with less than 40% of those same leaders ranking their existing payment system as good, every country has room to improve and can benefit from shared best practices. See
You get what you pay for: A global look at balancing demand, quality, and efficiency in healthcare payment reform.
