Data and analytics

Vizient Research Institute Executive Director Tom Robertson examines health care administrative costs in the United States compared to those in other western countries, including the incremental impact of the organizational infrastructure needed to compete for market share.

Aspiring to economic alignment between providers and patients is not unlike looking up and hoping for an eclipse. The altruistic nature of health care providers, and not the alignment of financial incentives, is necessary to balance the economic interests of the providers with those of their patients.

Has our trust in the market to govern the distribution of health care services and to establish rational, sustainable prices may have been misplaced or might the market be the wrong tool for the job?

The COVID-19 pandemic will likely have a lifelong emotional impact on the generations who live through it. This blog post is tribute to health care workers and a rallying cry for what lies ahead.

The percentage of Americans aged 65 or older will surpass 80 million by 2040 and will hit 94.7 million by 2060, brining brings with it an enormous burden of chronic illness, shouldered by a group of people who are increasingly disabled, socially isolated and severely limited in their ability to cope with their illnesses and the complexity of the health care system. At the same time, we have an unprecedented increase in the number of healthy seniors—folks whose professional careers are coming to a close, but whose physical and mental capabilities are far from exhausted. With their working lives winding down, many of these healthy seniors express feelings of diminished usefulness. It’s this fortuitous confluence of relatively healthy seniors and their less fortunate generational peers that make the echoes of volunteerism that John F. Kennedy spoke of in 1961 relevant today.

Using homeownership as an analogy, we'll explore how the traditional role of health insurance has been replaced by an expectation that each beneficiary will take out at least as much as they pay into the system, a fundamentally unsustainable economic model.

Most health care services volumes are poised for a rapid recovery from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a shift in where care is delivered that began before the pandemic has only accelerated and is particularly impacting emergency department demand.

Health care has not been spared from a nationwide labor shortage. This blog explores how the traditional payment system can complicate an already challenging situation and the implications for patient care and ongoing efforts to address the issue of health disparities.

A reflection on the findings of a recent study conducted by the Children’s Hospital Association and the implications for the wider U.S. health delivery system. Viewing the impacts of the pandemic through the lens of pediatrics offers a window into the broader issue of challenging socioeconomic determinants of health.

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 even as the virus generally abates while the new delta variant threatens? And what other drivers will factor into change? Here are several important trends along with what to expect.