Posted by Prealize Health ● March 17, 2021

2021 State of Health | Market Report | Prealize Health

Three major boomerang conditions payers and providers must proactively address 

 

Overview 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for individuals and U.S. healthcare organizations alike. With over 15 million cases and more than 300,000 deaths by the end of 2020, the pandemic has stretched an already taxed and largely reactive healthcare system to the limit. 

 

“There’s going to be an explosion in the presentation of certain diseases, such as cancer and cardiac conditions,” says Ronald A. Paulus, MD, President and CEO at RAPMD Strategic Advisors, and Immediate Past President and CEO of Mission Health, an integrated safety-net health system in North Carolina. “Many patients didn’t care for themselves or use the healthcare system in 2020 as they typically would, so many underlying diagnoses haven’t been discovered yet.” 

 

As 2021 dawns with several vaccines on the horizon, organizations must prepare for the fallout of additional residual healthcare crises. COVID- 19’s hidden victims—those who avoided or deferred care during the pandemic—will increasingly return to the healthcare system, and many will be diagnosed with new conditions at more advanced stages. This boomerang is a recipe for worse outcomes and higher costs. 

 

To explore the full scope of healthcare utilization and procedural declines in 2020, and assess how those declines will impact patients’ health and payers’ pocketbooks in 2021, Prealize Health, an AI-powered predictive healthcare analytics company, conducted an analysis of claims data from nearly 600,000 patients between March 2020 and August 2020. For this analysis, Prealize identified the three predicted conditions likely to see the largest increase in healthcare utilization in 2021. 

 

Read more on the State of Health: Bracing for Impact main page.

Topics: State of Health report