Women’s health is a hot topic. From restructuring service lines to improve experience, enhance efficiency, and address disparities to deploying digital innovations, women’s health is going through an era of sweeping change. Private equity and investment funding for women’s health totaled $1.3 billion in 2021, underlining a widespread interest in revolutionizing how, when, and where women receive care.
Based on what we’re seeing in the market, here are 10 drivers impacting women’s healthcare right now.
- Technology: Leading the investment boom are companies interested in streamlining and supporting women’s health through a variety of technology-enabled innovations: femtech, telehealth, digital marketing, branding and communications, EHRs, remote screening and monitoring, AI, CRMs, etc. Technology is changing how, when, and where women receive care by improving accessibility, customizing care, and connecting women to new services.
- Provider Integration: Alignment and consolidation between hospitals, health systems, and provider groups will continue, and women’s health services are not immune. JVs, IPAs, CINs, employment, start-ups, and venture capital are all enabling the service area to realize affiliation opportunities and overcome the challenges as the provider landscape shifts.
- Integrated, Coordinated Care across a Woman’s Life Span: Organizations are recognizing that while maternity care may be a woman’s first interaction with the healthcare system, it won’t be their last. Building service lines and systems through EMRs, CRMs, and clinical standardization will enhance continuity among providers, service lines, and systems.
- Consumer-Centric Models of Care : By emphasizing continuity, integration, and personalization, women’s health services are becoming convenient one-stop enterprises that will improve the patient experience and help address socioeconomic health disparities within women’s healthcare.
- Outpatient/Ambulatory Services: Women’s health programs have been at the forefront of the shift of surgical cases to the outpatient setting. Providers are enhancing their women’s health ambulatory offerings to differentiate their services, exploring new sites and programs: office-based procedures, ancillaries, integrative medicine, anesthesia, ASCs, birthing centers, breast centers, women’s pelvic health centers, women’s heart centers, women’s sports medicine centers, women’s health centers, women’s and children’s urgent care centers, and OB EDs.
- Subspecialty Services: Women’s health is multifaceted, and providers participating in the service line are increasingly encompassing subspecialty OB/GYN credentials: MFM, urogynecology, GYN-ONC, REI, breast centers, women’s heart and vascular, women’s orthopedics, women’s sports medicine, women’s GI, women’s mental health, and women’s neurology.
- Competition: New technologies and new services are fostering greater competition. Patients are consumers that are being presented more choices—and they have higher expectations. Telehealth and remote technology increase an organization’s geographic footprint, and organizations that provide an improved patient experience will be leaders in women’s healthcare.
- Innovative Provider Compensation and Models of Care: New care models are changing the way providers want to get paid. Care is focused on team-based management with partnership between advance practice clinicians, case managers, and specialists. Compensation is increasingly emphasizing work-life balance for providers, yielding new models around profit sharing, weighted RVUs, specialty-engineered productivity targets, and shared incentives. Increases in shared care are driving discontent with global payment models and prompting systems to reconsider how they incentivize providers for patient care.
- Social Media: Word of mouth (virtually or in person) is still the number one referral source for women’s health, and many women are turning to social media to seek guidance on providers and health systems. Employee ambassadors, customer service, community engagement, and fund-raising are pushing evolution in this space—publicly.
- Innovative Contracting: Women’s health reimbursement is at the tip of the value-based focus; organizations and payers are interested in understanding how they can take advantage of new care models—such as bundled payments, self-insured companies, value-added services, and value-based contracts—to drive value.
Women’s Health Business Opportunities: “Sweet Spots”
Learn more about the evolving business of women’s health by registering for the Innovations in Women’s Health Conference on April 21, 2022, at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. Tessa Kerby and Vicki Lucas are co-keynote speakers and will be joined by other experts in women’s health business.
Published March 16, 2022