NHS chief financial officers (CFOs) claim the adoption of next-generation digital technology is ‘crucial’ to meeting the growing demands being place on health operators across the world.
An 11-page White Paper published this week by Siemens Financial Services (SFS), entitled Taking the Pulse: How healthcare CFOs around the world are managing change, questions CFOs on the challenges and solutions to improving healthcare services.
It reveals that, moving forward, healthcare organisations worldwide face four main issues: demographic change; shifting patient expectations; the requirement to reform; and the rising tide of healthcare technology trends and digitalisation.
The research revealed that of the CFOs questions, 60-70% reported that rising patient expectations, shrinking availability of capital, and the need to consolidate were all exerting severe pressure on their organisations. 40-50% of respondents noted a number of additional, emerging pressures were also already ‘severe’, such as implementing early detection, starting the transition from cost-per-procedure health management and value-based reimbursement models, and developing centres of excellence to compete better with rival healthcare operators.
And they said that investing in new-generation digitalised healthcare technology would play a critical role in enabling transformation.
Almost 90% of respondents said investing in this technology was ‘important’, ‘extremely important’ or ‘crucial’ for their organisation, with 70% describing investment as an ‘urgent priority’.
And they are seeking smart ways of financing that technology, with almost two thirds interviewed stating that innovative financing techniques such as leasing and rental packages were ‘important’ or ‘crucial’ to the ability to manage transformation.
As well as outlining the challenges the industry faces over the coming months and years, the paper also looks at technology trends moving forward.
it states: “Across the globe, healthcare systems and authorities are recognising the power of innovative technology to help them implement critical reform and improvement of healthcare delivery.
“To this end, increasingly-accurate, sensitive and efficient diagnostic technologies are attracting a great deal of investment attention. For example, mobile healthcare is predicted to grow almost tenfold between 2013-2018 to a value of some $21.5billion.”
On the need for innovation in funding methods, it adds: “Specialist financiers who bring an indepth understanding of the new-generation technology and the ways it is applied to real-world outcomes appear to be favoured by healthcare institutions. These are felt to offer a level of flexibility and understanding the allows the most-appropriate, individually-structured financing arrangements to be offers, with terms and periods flexed to suit the organisation’s cash flow and working capital management needs.”
