Contending with disruptors was top of mind for healthcare CFOs in 2023, and Amazon Clinic gave them a run for their money, literally.
CFOs know that if you choose not to, or simply can’t, partner with the disruptors in your market, be prepared to compete with them.
Market disruptors will be in most markets in no time. Not only are these disruptors targeting the most profitable portions of a healthcare CFO’s business, but they are also more aggressive than the normal competition.
So, who were CFOs seeing as the biggest disruptors in the market in 2023? Look no further than big tech, retail giants, private equity, and national payer vertical integration. This year though, Amazon Clinic was in the spotlight.
Retail giant Amazon is still disrupting healthcare in several ways, but one of the areas Amazon Clinic took aim at this year is somewhere providers are especially vulnerable: price transparency.
As we know, healthcare costs can be incredibly cloudy, so when Amazon Clinic announced its commitment to price transparency, CFOs were forced to rethink their competitiveness in their pricing structures.
Luckily, even though Amazon Clinic represents a major market disruptor for healthcare CFOs, organizations learned that they could adapt and compete by leveraging existing strengths, embracing price transparency technology, and prioritizing the patient experience.
Leveraging Existing Strengths
What Amazon Clinic is attempting to do with their transparent, tiered pricing isn't unheard of and its limitations make it more supplemental than a true replacement of care services, but providers should be getting the message loud and clear that innovation is necessary for them to survive in the future.
Providers still have the homefield advantage as the more trusted source for care and they still have a leg-up by allowing patients to pay with their insurance, a fact that CFOs should leverage.
Embracing Price Transparency Technology
When it comes to price transparency technology, it will likely still take some time before there is a widescale adoption of advanced technology in this space, but hospitals shouldn't skip steps in the meantime by not doing their part to be as transparent as possible for patients.
Streamlining pricing and making it readily available for patients to view is a must, not only in the regulatory space but for bettering the patient experience too.
Prioritizing The Patient Experience
Speaking of patient experience, building greater trust with patients by creating ease of use is a good place to start when a disruptor like Amazon Clinic encroaches an organization’s lane.
"Healthcare, I believe, is still a relationship business and will be at least for a while longer," Kris Kurtz, CFO at University of Michigan Health-West, told HealthLeaders this year.
"We have patient relationships today for the most part, so it's our business to loosen access, and the ease of use is probably the best strategy we can deploy. As an industry, we make it far too difficult for patients to enter and navigate the system. In some instances, we may need to partner with the disruptors rather than compete with them. [Likely it's] probably a combination of both," Kurtz said.
Amanda Norris is the Director of Content for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Healthcare costs can be incredibly cloudy, so when Amazon Clinic announced its commitment to price transparency, CFOs were forced to rethink their competitiveness in their pricing structures.
Luckily, CFOs learned there were three ways they could adapt and compete with the retail giant's price transparency.