Healthcare Recession: How Can Providers Help Their Patients and Themselves?

Can healthcare even experience recessions? They can and have. Learn how facilities can better prepare for these recessions while also not compromising on patient care.

When we think of a recession, we often tend to exempt healthcare facilities from the conversation. Afterall, people are constantly in need of healing and care. Because of this, many tend to think of a “healthcare recession” as nothing more than fiction and believe the industry as a whole is actually recession proof. Unfortunately, a recent survey by Black Book Research confirms that 100% of CFOs interviewed acknowledged that they will experience a significant revenue decline this fiscal year. This impact is so deep that they all admit they will need to considerably change spending and operation policies in the coming months to adapt.

Is the Medical Field Recession Proof?

When economic hits occur, people lose jobs. When people lose jobs, they lose health coverage. As these economic impacts become more wide-spread, healthcare spending becomes much more conservative and people become more likely to bear with symptoms until they require immediate attention.

Furthermore, now that social distancing is becoming the norm, this aversion to hospital visits has become even more pronounced. Patients need to be seen remotely and new infrastructures of delivering care need to be placed rapidly to meet rampant demand, placing more of a financial burden on healthcare facilities - something we’ve seen reflected in the loss of nearly 1.4 million healthcare jobs in April as an inability to pay staff skyrockets.

Fortunately, despite how dire a healthcare recession can be, there are actions providers can take to lower the impact.

Communicate with Patients

Despite current events, patients still want to see their physicians and there are a number of ways providers can continue to communicate with patients and provide consultation during a healthcare recession.

Evolving triage practices, for example, are allowing physicians to speak with patients and gauge symptoms and concerns remotely. They also only take minutes, meaning many more patients can be seen by a physician in a day.

Healthcare chatbots that have been created and optimized to answer questions on a specific topic can also provide patients with educational materials without requiring limited time and resources to be spent on a telehealth or in-person visit.

Finally, patient portal messaging can also assist patients and physicians who wish to speak with each other and address quick questions without taking up too much time.

Give Patients Payment Options

During a recent webinar hosted by Becker’s Hospital Review, patient financing experts explained that, in economic downturns past, people had a hierarchy of prioritization when it came to which bills they would pay first when they were able to make payments. Surprisingly, credit card bills were much more likely to top that list because credit card providers offered flexible payment plans.

If this is a route you feel your facility can go down, the same webinar speakers emphasized the importance of a self-service payment model that allows patients to make their payments online on their own time. They also recommend facilities survey their patients on the effectiveness of these payment methods in order to further tailor plans that are more likely to result in payment.

Use Proper Tech to Lower Further Expense Risks

During a recession where resources are scarce and manpower is even scarcer, there are two things providers can’t afford to experience: cyberattacks and in-facility infections. Both of these occurrences can cost hospitals staggering amounts of money.

It’s unfortunate, but healthcare facilities have suffered no shortage of cyberattacks in the face of current pandemic developments.Efforts can be made, however, to lower the risk of cyberattacks at the hardware level. Medical Computers can be fortified against these attacks with multi-factor authentication hardware such as RFID, CAC, and biometric scanners.

Proper infection protection procedures also need to be enacted which means repeated cleanings and disinfections every few hours. In order to prevent the rubbing away of antimicrobial properties on healthcare hardware, proper research needs to be done in finding computers and medical tablets that don’t use cheap coatings and instead protect both their casings and screens with built-in nano-silver tech.

Healthcare Recessions Exist, But They Don’t Spell the End

Unfortunately, a healthcare recession is a very real threat and the industry is hardly recession proof. In times such as these where both providers and the general population are struggling, it’s up to providers to look out for both themselves and their patient-base with the right tech initiatives. For more information on what hardware can help, contact a professional from Cybernet’s team today.