Sg2 Blog

Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for clarity. Sg2 was formed in 2001, and, today, our cutting-edge expertise, analytics and tailored consulting offerings help health industry leaders anticipate health care trends and provide them with unparalleled insight into local market dynamics. We are just one of the companies that founder Michael Sachs started—and grew—with his visio...

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 children’s hospitals and large pediatric programs work toward recovery and stabilization, administrative and clinical leaders are assessing which elements of COVID-19 disruption and innovation are here to stay. Many children’s hospitals have begun to understand their continued volume depletion, attributing lost emergency department and inpatient volumes to the natural consequences ...

Editor’s Note: Jenna Stern, Vizient, AVP, Regulatory Affairs & Public Policy, also contributed to this post. In the absence of congressional intervention, a significant financial incentive for physicians to participate in value-based payment models will disappear at the end of 2022. To provide greater stability to providers reimbursed by Medicare, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthori...

Environmental factors are adversely impacting provider financials and weakening providers’ positions in fee-for-service (FFS) contracting. Providers have been working to regain financial stability after pandemic-driven volume swings that were quickly followed by workforce shortages—now the health care industry can add inflation to the list of considerable challenges. These pressures have quickly ...

Health care organizations are currently trying to identify opportunities for enhanced revenue streams as they continue to struggle financially due to the COVID-19 endemic—hospital margins are expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels, with more than half of hospitals projected to have negative margins. And health care leaders have long understood how patient leakage also dramatically aff...

Many health care delivery organizations believe fee-for-service (FFS) and value-based care (VBC) economic models are at odds with each other. Many analogies highlight this divergence—with perhaps the most popular being the illustration of an individual with one foot grounded on the dock and the other foot on a boat slowly pulling away. While this visual is powerful, it overstates the necess...

Anyone who has visited Colorado and driven down from the mountains toward Denver will recognize the title of this article. The same words of caution apply to the health care ecosystem moving into 2023. Despite the tricky financial gradient health care organizations have navigated since the onset of the pandemic, the road ahead remains challenging. Let’s break down some of the financial force...

With the Strategy Accelerator program, efforts to strategically prioritize your physician alignment initiative take shape As internal and external pressures push care out of the hospital, health systems must identify the best clinical opportunities and local trends for expanding their ambulatory business. Innovator organizations understand there are both opportunities and vulnerabilities amid w...

Note: Vizient's David Levine, MD, FACEP, Group Senior Vice President, Advanced Analytics and Product Management and Simrit Sandhu, Executive Vice President, Strategic Transformation and Clinical-Supply Solutions also contributed to this report. Health system leaders have faced unprecedented challenges over the past three years. The pandemic caused a sharp decline in inpatient volumes and a tempor...