Describe the changing environment for healthcare and medicine in the US today. What are the new opportunities and challenges in this changing landscape for a firm like Philips? ANS: Healthcare providers under pressure and due to the passing of Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 led to a shift among healthcare providers toward the fee for value models rather than fee-for-service (FFS). The ACA specified that hospital compensation is determined in part by the quality of outcomes rather than on FFS basis as before. .
High-quality outcomes or patient satisfaction scores could lead hospitals to receive financial rewards, but there were high rates of penalties for readmission or hospital-acquired conditions. This transformation made the hospitals invest more in IT-based solutions. Consumers also began using technology to become further engaged and better educated about their health.
This shift to fee-for-value presented new opportunities for providers to focus on holistic wellness and population health management initiatives that would not have been possible under the old FFS model. Most of the healthcare providers needed better analytics and measurement capabilities in order to track quality improvements and focus on integrated delivery of care and continuous betterment of patient outcomes. Doctors and hospitals were offered incentives to shift from paper to electronic medical record (EMR). Patients could view and request corrections to their medical records, but EMR vendors made it difficult tot extract EMR data for use in other applications or services. Efforts to upgrade IT in hospitals were limited by poor data connectivity, difficulty-extracting data from home network and lack of training for physicians on how to incorporate data and analytics into their workflow. In developing countries, poor infrastructure and staff shortages were hurdles too.
2. Consider the "software stack." Where in the stack does Philips play with the HSDP offering? Who/what are the main sources of competition and/or threats in the volatile healthcare environment?.