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. 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 in an interview.
In a 146-page report, Trilliant Health outlines 13 macro trends influencing the healthcare industry including population migration, telehealth adoption, competition from new entrants and healthcare costs.
Trilliant Health’s analysis found that several long-term trends were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, creating new challenges for every stakeholder in the health economy.
The company’s analysis is based on third-party data resources and the company’s proprietary all-payer claims database that informs longitudinal patient journeys for more than 300 million Americans. Trilliant Health executives aim for healthcare stakeholders to use the report to develop evidence-based strategies to compete.
Primary care growth projected to be anemic with increased competition
After more than two years of below-average national primary care utilization, volumes in the first quarter of 2022 were 0.2% higher than in 2019. However, primary care trends vary significantly by market. Urgent care volumes are higher and primary care is approaching pre-pandemic levels, driven by COVID-19-related care, the report found.
The national median incidence rate for primary care is projected to nominally increase (1.7% CAGR) between 2022 and 2026. As a result, by 2026, Americans are projected to need 1.2 primary care visits per year on average, which is only 0.1 more visits above observed 2021 levels, the analysis found.
