Sg2 Blog

As we kick off 2022, health systems may feel they are playing out the movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray, trapped in a time loop, endlessly relives a day with Andie MacDowell. The movie serves as an omen three decades in the making, shining a light on the importance of perseverance and human connections—attributes that continue to epitomize health care. It is in the spirit of forgin...

Nearly 16 years ago, I made the fortuitous choice to join a small but mighty team of health care change agents at a company called Sg2. In a conference room in Skokie, IL, Sg2’s founder, the late Michael Sachs, addressed a team of about 20 new hires (representing about 20 percent of the rapidly growing company) with what I came to understand was his everyday passion: health care and our need...

As care increasingly shifts out of the hospital, health systems’ goals for their ambulatory business also are shifting. No longer are innovator organizations content for these services to function strictly as feeders of an inpatient core; they expect ambulatory services to independently boost the bottom line. Achieving that goal, however, can be elusive. Success in the ambulatory arena is mo...

Editor’s note: Principal Rebecca Segel also contributed to this post. Three cultural influencing trends are colliding in the US: a global pandemic, a recession and a racial inequity awakening. Each of these is drawing more attention to what we already know in health care—that is, factors such as race, socioeconomic status, environmental elements and social structures influence health....

As part of Sg2’s value-based care (VBC) analysis and market research, we review the quarterly earnings calls from a subset of publicly traded legacy payers and VBC-focused entrants. The summary is designed to highlight emerging trends and dynamics in these closely related industries, especially as these tie to VBC. The following post draws from recently released earnings call transcripts fr...

Each year, Sg2 experts examine trends that will change health care utilization across the care continuum, which results in our Impact of Change® (IoC) Demand Forecast. Our health system members leverage the IoC forecast to revise their strategic plans, prioritize investments and redesign their health care systems. Predicting the future in this time of uncertainty is far from easy, but the Sg2 ...

Brain tumor care is a highly specialized area that spans the cancer and neurosciences service lines. Sg2’s 2024 Impact of Change forecast projects modest growth for brain/central nervous system (CNS) tumor services over the decade: 1% for inpatient, 13% outpatient. Provider systems confront a highly competitive landscape for these low-volume, high-margin services. To capture the opportunity ...

As part of Sg2’s value-based care (VBC) analysis and market research, we review the quarterly earnings calls from a subset of publicly traded legacy payers and VBC-focused entrants. The summary is designed to highlight emerging trends and dynamics in these closely related industries, especially as they tie to VBC. The following post draws from recently released earnings call transcripts fro...

Prioritize where to begin care at home efforts in your organization Care at home is not a new concept to many in the healthcare sector as it has existed in some form for the past 30 years. But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need to deliver care differently, specifically leveraging digital health capabilities and shifting care into the home setting. According to Sg2’s Impact of Change&...

Physician referral analytic tools have existed for decades to help health care organizations understand referral patterns, prioritize outreach efforts and monitor progress, and organizations have long considered physician outreach teams as tools to improve leakage and increase revenue. While both of these still hold true today, there is actually more to the story. Leakage from affiliated physician...