Sg2 Blog

As children's hospitals and providers of complex pediatric care emerge from the pandemic, we have seen familiar challenges and priorities tenaciously reemerge. Chronic inadequacies in pediatric behavioral health service delivery, combined with pandemic-induced disruption and stress, have worsened today's acute pediatric mental health crisis. The rising prevalence and severity of pediatric behavior...

Each year Sg2 debuts the latest enrollment projections from our five-year Insurance Coverage Estimates (ICE) demand forecast. The team considers ZIP code level, age, federal poverty level, ethnicity and gender data to meaningfully distribute the population across financial groups. The following national trends were key inputs to the 2023 ICE model. Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding. Sourc...

Note: Vizient's David Levine, MD, FACEP, Group Senior Vice President, Advanced Analytics and Product Management and Simrit Sandhu, Executive Vice President, Strategic Transformation and Clinical-Supply Solutions also contributed to this report. Health system leaders have faced unprecedented challenges over the past three years. The pandemic caused a sharp decline in inpatient volumes and a tempor...

Prioritize where to begin care at home efforts in your organization Care at home is not a new concept to many in the healthcare sector as it has existed in some form for the past 30 years. But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need to deliver care differently, specifically leveraging digital health capabilities and shifting care into the home setting. According to Sg2’s Impact of Change&...

With the Strategy Accelerator program, efforts to strategically prioritize care at home programs for deployment take shape. Amid increasing inpatient lengths of stay; capacity limitations; and pressure from competitors, policy makers, payers and patients, the forces pointing to care at home as an opportunity continue to mount. However, success requires careful planning and analysis to craft a tail...

Anyone who has visited Colorado and driven down from the mountains toward Denver will recognize the title of this article. The same words of caution apply to the health care ecosystem moving into 2023. Despite the tricky financial gradient health care organizations have navigated since the onset of the pandemic, the road ahead remains challenging. Let’s break down some of the financial force...

For some, value-based care (VBC) is just a trendy term that replaces other expressions that have come before it (eg, population health, accountable care, managed care). It often connotes a payer contracting strategy that involves some degree of risk sharing and quality reporting, but for those providers who fully embrace it, it’s much more. VBC is a vital part of addressing the challenges th...

Health care organizations are currently trying to identify opportunities for enhanced revenue streams as they continue to struggle financially due to the COVID-19 endemic—hospital margins are expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels, with more than half of hospitals projected to have negative margins. And health care leaders have long understood how patient leakage also dramatically aff...

It’s that time of year! CMS recently finalized a set of changes to the country’s largest alternative payment model (APM): the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). With a goal of attracting new entrants, retaining existing accountable care organizations (ACOs) and encouraging ACOs with expiring participation agreements to renew their commitment, this broad set of changes constitutes ...

Many health care delivery organizations believe fee-for-service (FFS) and value-based care (VBC) economic models are at odds with each other. Many analogies highlight this divergence—with perhaps the most popular being the illustration of an individual with one foot grounded on the dock and the other foot on a boat slowly pulling away. While this visual is powerful, it overstates the necess...