The Future of Health Care: Payers Identify Key Trends

A recent survey presented at the AMCP Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting 2019 shed light on trends that payers believe are the most impactful to the future of health care. 

“A variety of interwoven trends are changing the face of health care,” explained lead researcher Paula Hilton and colleagues. “These trends include, but aren’t limited to, drug affordability, innovative and curative therapies, industry consolidation, optimal health coverage, population health management, and accelerated drug approvals.  

According to Ms Hilton and colleagues, payers are a key group that are working toward solutions that address the aforementioned trends. To better understand payer insights in health care trends and also identify the most promising solutions to foster wider implementation of innovative strategies, a 33-item web-based survey was distributed to US pharmacy, contracting, and medical directors, and clinical pharmacists across national and regional accountable care organizations, integrated delivery networks, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers. Respondents were asked about their familiarity with health care trends and corresponding barriers.

Based on the survey responses, drug affordability was ranked most impactful on the future of health care with 93% of respondents classifying it as extremely or very impactful followed by innovative and curative therapies (88%) and industry consolidation (80%).  

“Affordability faces many barriers, with lack of pricing transparency being most prominent,” researchers explained. “The top barrier facing innovative and curative therapies is cost, which 99% of respondents believe is extremely/very challenging even while 69% believe it will be addressed in 6-10 years.” 

Roughly all of the survey respondents (91%) said that industry consolidation could harm patient choice. Finally, the trends that were rated as less impactful overall were optimal health coverage (76%), population health management (73%), and expedited drug approvals (47%).  

“Given the complexity of these trends and barriers, their respective solutions must be multifaceted,” Ms Hilton and colleagues concluded. “Health care IT, artificial intelligence, and big data are instrumental to craft innovative solutions. Social determinants of health should also be considered to drive meaningful change.”—Julie Gould