Congress targeted $100 billion for health care via the Cares Act and will send providers a second installment shortly to compensate for the economic impact of the coronavirus.

Your hospital canceled elective surgeries and doctors rescheduled patient appointments as part of the ramp-up to deal with a contagion outbreak in the communities you serve.

Hospitals are again beginning to schedule elective surgeries. Doctors are again offering in-person visits but also offering the convenience of virtual visits via telehealth. Reopening the economy will look different in each state as will the economic rebound.

How do you measure potential variations to utilization, acuity, and revenue (market) drivers over the next 6 months?  Moreover, how does this change scoring for a new fiscal budget?

We use our algorithm’s powerful predictive analytics to model different financial scenarios in any season, not just for a new fiscal budget. Making sense of the data is a first step to forecasting how the coronavirus crisis could impact hospital finances.

Will your service area’s economic rebound be quick, gradual, or uneven? How do you define each?

The shut-down of our national economy affected some industries more than others. The unemployment numbers are sobering – how quickly will rehiring take place? How will this affect private and public companies in your service area? What about small business – how quickly will they start rehiring?

States are now planning their roll-out based on a three-phase process.

We use financial modeling analysis to measure potential rebound scenarios. This starts with doing a deep dive into service line charge and payer data, revenue drivers, brand strength, and market positioning.

We’ll create a set of metrics based on market, demographic, and economic factors that will help you forecast your hospital’s financial rebound. Defining what each of the three possible scenarios looks like speaks to calibrating the potential impact of change.

Here are some of the logical steps in forecasting a rebound:

• Confirm the trend in service line volume, profitability, patient demographics, and revenue drivers in the 6-month run-up to the coronavirus crisis
• Quantify the impact of the crisis by individual service line and revenue driver
• Quantify pent-up demand for elective surgeries and other services that were canceled
• Create a timeline with revenue projections for rescheduled elective surgeries and diagnostics
• Quantify existing service line patient inventories
• Extrapolate new patient data by service line for the 6-month period prior to the virus
• Create a model that factors-in key economic indicators for your service area
• Define what a quick return to ‘normal’, a gradual build, or one that impacts service lines unevenly look like in service line volume, revenue drivers, and net revenue
• Model different scenarios for emerging trends and patterns of change
• Model possible changes in demographics, revenue drivers, and service line utilization
• Aggregate the different sets
• Apply the algorithm’s predictive analytics to generate different financial scenarios for the rebound
• Adjust budget forecasts accordingly
• Measure results in the lift-off phase and recovery rebound

Reconciling recent 6-month empirical data with change analysis predicated on reasonable assumptions supported by predictive analytics is the only way to plan strategically and tactically for an effective lift-off and rebound recovery.

A companion piece to this could be a well-thought out branding, marketing, and communication campaign that reinforces brand strength and patient loyalty by celebrating staff excellence and the cooperation of patients and loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic.

Patients and consumers need to know your hospital is scheduling both convenient virtual visits and traditional office visits, new elective surgeries and diagnostic tests, and primary care wellness visits to meet their immediate needs.

See what ‘Q’ can do for you!