Sg2 Blog

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Sg2’s parent company Vizient Inc’s blog. For most of 2020, COVID-19 disrupted and significantly altered the infrastructure of the world’s industries, including health care delivery and services. But at what level can we expect health care to return to pre-pandemic levels? What are the long-term effects of the pandemic ev...

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...

Virtual visit volumes have increased dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many health systems have made strides in virtual health program implementation. However, virtual visits are only one element of a robust digital health program. Provider systems have yet to fully capitalize on the benefits of digital solutions, and the vast menu available can be confounding. Understanding how specific...

With the ever-changing health care landscape, it's essential for organizations to prioritize access as a critical part of their value proposition to consumers. Patients as consumers are savvy now and have more options than ever on where to receive care. By adopting a consumer-centric approach, health care systems can create a seamless and convenient experience for patients. Drawing inspiration fro...

Our opinions, beliefs and values influence our choice of words and phrases. However, we are not always conscious of the reverse — that our choice of language can influence our opinions, beliefs, and values. This is a highly overlooked factor in humans’ adaptability to change. When we use terms that have a significant and emotional meaning in one context to another, we bring that contex...

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...

Medicare’s new Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM) is an important opportunity for oncology practices to participate in a voluntary alternative payment model (APM) designed to increase the value of care for Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients undergoing chemotherapy. This five-year model not only builds on the Oncology Care Model (OCM) and offers incentives to manage care while reducing spend...

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 ...

Health care is dynamic, and external market forces are increasingly volatile. Health systems are beginning to see margins stabilize, but long-term financial strength continues to be top of mind for health care leaders throughout the nation. One way systems can look to diversify financial performance is through enhancing their value-based care (VBC) strategy, but how to best do that may take on man...

Health care providers in many markets have found themselves becoming a part of something larger than they originally signed up for. For hospitals and health systems to be sustainable during current workforce challenges and margin pressures, they are increasingly joining large networks to drive revenue. As a result, the health care industry is seeing record numbers of mergers and acquisitions, ofte...