By Denise Bisogno, Business Development Manager
Here’s where we ended.
Healthcare Financial Management reported in an article December 3rd – There are slight marginal gains being seen and felt in the 4th quarter. Still operating margins in individual hospitals lessened and non-labor expenses remained significantly higher.
Health system operating margins grew from 1.6% in September to 1.8% in October. However, physician expenses remained elevated and continue to shift up.
What’s the forecast for 2025?
Predictions are being made that the inpatient and outpatient volumes will continue to increase. But the needs to grow virtual services, and adapt to a hospital of the future, means obtaining new equipment and technology to keep pace in the market will also increase financial output. But predictions are just that… merely a prediction.
The “buzzword” of 2025’s healthcare market seems to be “access to care” this means leveraging AI Technology (which was the 2024 buzzword) and expanding virtual service lines is a main focus. Generating creative community partnerships and enhancing access to telehealth add to the multi-faceted needs for the coming year. This means adding ambulatory sites, new construction, telehealth training and staff, and significant investment in new care coordination platforms. This all equates to spending more – investing more – the output as a whole is just more.
It’s evident… There is already a lot going on and the Times Square Ball hasn’t even dropped yet.
Preparing for Battle – The hidden enemy in your hospital in 2025.
There will always be disruptions happening within the healthcare arena. But currently the main disruptor that doesn’t seem to be given the proper level of discussion is the possibility for more supply disruption and increased supply chain costs.
It is worth noting that the current proposed U.S. increased tariffs to be imposed on foreign supplies includes medical supply and devices. Inflated costs due to higher demand was a tremendous challenge in the pandemic years. The scarcity and inflated pricing experienced concerning PPE is a lesson healthcare painfully learned.
FE Healthcare noted in an article posted this month, 60% of tariffs for all Chinese imports will cause significant disruption to the health supply chain. And would affect 13.6% of the total US marketed devices currently manufactured in China.
My point is this… We have learned that supply disruptions reverberate through your hospital and can create havoc instantly. Having the right preparation plan in place to ease the expected financial burden, and to be ready to balance cost output by engaging new streams of savings support is an intelligent design feature that shouldn’t come later. Prevention is worth a pound of cure always.
Enlisting a streamlined and immediate design like automating the purchased services area would effectively ensure invoicing is consistent with contractual pricing, and negotiated terms before invoices are paid, is key to optimize value.
Having instantaneous control in mapping all spend activity to contract terms to uncover utilization in efficiencies, historical overcharges and billing errors going unnoticed in the day-to-day financial landscape is a game changer financially.
Enlisting deeper insight and visibility into your spend analytics is giving preventative power. Engaging an end-to-end model such as SpendMend’s patented, automated, end to end approach for purchased services allows you to predict and present future cost savings capability. Simultaneously fortifying a robust contract strategy to protect value, ensure dollars are not misspent, and effectively tracks and monitors performance instantly.
2025 is at the door to your organization, are you ready? Embrace the challenge with new and complete end to end automated solutions that are not simply a “singular tool”. It’s a bold choice that many C-Suite leaders are embracing and finding true financial success, a granular view and ultimately much stronger value. It’s worth consideration and I encourage you to take a closer look into fortifying your supply chain/purchasing plan for 2025.
To learn more about the proven success of SpendMend’s Invoice ROI approach, go to www.spendmend.com or reach out to dbisogno@spendmend.com
