Trilliant Health just released its 2024 Trends Shaping the Health Economy Report, delivering a unique perspective on the healthcare market through the lens of supply and demand.
The fourth edition of the report builds on the core findings from the previous three:
- 2021: Healthcare is a negative-sum game.
- 2022: Every part of the health economy will be impacted by reduced yield.
- 2023: The victors in healthcare’s negative-sum game will be those who deliver value.
This year’s 164 page analysis is organized into eight sections, each examining a significant macro trend and supported by a wide collection of data-driven stories:
- 1) The healthcare system is disproportionately expensive. Despite spending nearly 2X more on healthcare than peer countries, utilization has remained largely unchanged, while increasing 7% in peer countries since 2000. U.S. outcomes are also far worse. (Page 11 Chart)
- 2) Health status continues to decline. We’re seeing higher volumes of early onset cancers in patients under age 45 for breast (+6.6%), colon (+10.0%), and kidney (+2.1%) between 2018 and 2023. (Page 22 Chart)
- 3) Government regulation is failing to produce value. This one’s a mixed bag. Regulating cigarettes decreased usage by 30%, but mandated reporting of quality measures hasn’t yielded enough improvement to offset the cost of reporting. (Page 46 Chart)
- 4) The value of tech advancements is uncertain. Since 2018, multiple AI CPT codes have been introduced, but utilization remains infrequent and concentrated among cardiac conditions such as coronary artery disease and ECG cardiac dysfunction. (Page 77 Chart)
- 5) Supply constraints are correlated with inadequate yield. The decrease in practicing physicians from 2019 to 2023 resulted in a -0.9% workforce reduction. Notably, 31.3% of physicians changed practice location over that time period. (Page 89 Chart)
- 6) Forced consumerism has fostered fragmentation. Over 14% of patients with commercial coverage go out-of-network for behavioral health services, versus just 2% for physical care. (Page 111 Chart)
- 7) Lower-cost care settings can offer better value. New treatment paradigms often start in the hospital but shift to new settings over time (due to new tools, reimbursement reform). How long will that continue? (Page 125 Chart)
- 8) Employers are better equipped to demand value. Employers have historically been relatively passive in managing healthcare costs., but new transparency requirements compel them to change that. (Page 148 Chart)
The Takeaway
Trilliant’s report showcases the fact that the inputs of the U.S. healthcare system, as measured by cost, exceed the outputs, as measured by the actual value received by Americans. As Trilliant’s Head of Research Sanjula Jain puts it, “every stakeholder can – and must – deliver more value to their customers.”
