Sg2 Blog

Environmental factors are adversely impacting provider financials and weakening providers’ positions in fee-for-service (FFS) contracting. Providers have been working to regain financial stability after pandemic-driven volume swings that were quickly followed by workforce shortages—now the health care industry can add inflation to the list of considerable challenges. These pressures have quickly ...

Editor's note: Randena Hulstrand, Lead Brand Journalist, Vizient, contributed to this post. By addressing hospital utilization and quality, implementing innovative models of care and forging partnerships, health systems can help reduce economic disparities and improve patient access to behavioral healthcare services. While behavioral health conditions—including major depression, anxiety and ...

Despite headwinds, private equity (PE) continues to make strong inroads into health care. PE investment will remain a significant force for the foreseeable future, which represents both an opportunity and a challenge for health systems. Although some see PE as an unwelcome intrusion that complicates physician alignment and service line growth, forward-thinking health systems are leveraging PE par...

Michael Ash, MD, is the president and chief operating officer for Nebraska Medicine, based in Omaha, Nebraska. Q: You’ve had quite a career—starting as an internal medicine physician, moving into health IT at Cerner (now Oracle), and serving as a chief transformation officer before stepping into your COO role. How have these experiences shaped your leadership approach? A: I've always been interes...

Since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, we’ve been busy discussing with health care stakeholders how to best plan for and use AI across their organizations, from supporting clinical decision-making to reducing administrative burdens. What I didn’t plan for was having nearly half of these discussions focus on supply chain. But perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise—wh...

Understanding the Transition: ACO REACH Replaces Current Direct Contracting Model On February 24, 2022, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced the ACO REACH (Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health) Model, with an application period ending April 22, 2022. ACO REACH will replace the current Direct Contracting Model (DC) on January 1, 2023, as the highest level of...

In our previous post, we discussed health inequities in our current health care landscape, providing some examples of how the negative impacts of social determinants of health can contribute to undesirable health outcomes and lead to significant health disparities. Now, we would like to focus on how health systems can be more aware of these disparities and turn that awareness into action. Health e...

Editor’s note: Principal Rebecca Segel also contributed to this post. Three cultural influencing trends are colliding in the US: a global pandemic, a recession and a racial inequity awakening. Each of these is drawing more attention to what we already know in health care—that is, factors such as race, socioeconomic status, environmental elements and social structures influence health....

For most health systems, the post-COVID survivor mode has ended. Systems have reached some level of cost structure and workforce stability, and they can turn their attention once again to strategic investments and growth. But that doesn’t mean the coming years will be without challenges. Top of mind for many is ambulatory growth and access, capacity management, new revenue generation, and s...

As part of Sg2’s value-based care (VBC) analysis and market research, we review the quarterly earnings calls from a subset of publicly traded legacy payers and VBC-focused entrants. The summary is designed to highlight emerging trends and dynamics in these closely related industries, especially as they tie to VBC. The following post draws from recently released earnings call transcripts fro...