Stakeholder Views on Trends, Winners and Losers for 2014

By Clive Riddle, February, 14, 2014

MCOL recently conducted its annual Future Care e-Poll, asking stakeholders their perspective of trends, winners and losers for the coming year and beyond. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the results from the soon to be released report on this year’s findings. The full report still being compiled addresses additional e-poll questions, breaks down responses by stakeholder category and compares results to previous years.

Here’s a table of how respondents view the business trend that will have the greatest overall impact in 2014. The Affordable Care Act of course dominates all other issues, and even more so than last year, when exactly half of respondents list it as the trend with the greatest impact.

Affordable Care Act Implementation	61.1%
Government Spending Cuts	9.7%
Consumerism Initiatives	6.9%
Effects of the Economy	6.9%
Increased Consumer Cost Sharing	5.6%
Compliance Issues	4.2%
Other	2.8%
Advances in Health Care Technology	1.4%
Population Health and Wellness Initiatives	1.4%

Below is an infoGraphoid MCOL published earlier this week illustrating the e-poll results on this question. The designer of this graph informed me it looked like a green Pac-Man (the ACA respondents) vomiting a rainbow (of all the other respondents.)

Regarding winners and losers, here’s what stakeholders thought 2014’s fortunes would bring to other stakeholders:

Losers:

Hospitals – 56% say Hospitals are the big losers (only 18% said better off; 26% the same)

Physicians – 53% view Physicians as worse off (only 8% said better off; 38% the same)

Employers  - 52% think Employers are worse off (only 15% said better off; 33% the same)

Consumers  - 51% placed them in the losers column (34% said better off; 15% the same)

Status Quo:

Pharmaceutical – 60% see Pharmaceutical organizations as staying the same (29% said better off; only 11% said worse off)

Winners:

Health Plans – 47% say Health Plans as the big winners (29% said they will stay the same; 24% said they will be worse off)

It’s interesting that the stakeholder that the ACA was designed to benefit – the Consumer – is not viewed by stakeholders as the biggest beneficiary. It’s also interesting that last year respondents didn’t view health plans fortunes near as positive – at the start of 2013, 27% replied health plans would be better off;  34% said the same; and 39% said worse off.