Patient demand for primary care and surgical care services remains below pre-pandemic levels, and patient visits “delayed” or “deferred” during the COVID-19 pandemic may be permanently lost, according to a new analysis.
At the same time, the number of commercially insured patients decreases while healthcare costs continue to rise, Fierce Healthcare reports. Patients also have more choices than before with the increasing supply of new entrants like CVS, Amazon and Walmart making consumer loyalty more difficult to capture. These trends all pose significant competitive threats to traditional healthcare providers, said Sanjula Jain, Ph.D., chief research officer and senior vice president of market strategy at healthcare analytics company Trilliant Health.
“Despite there being more care options, whether that’s new entrants, whether that’s telehealth, patients, at large, across the country have not returned to pre-pandemic care patterns and that’s the bottom line of what’s affecting everyone’s business model,” Jain said. Read more.
