16 Ways Health Execs Can Stay Ahead of the Competition

1. Keep your competitors in sight

“Make sure you know what your members, providers, employees want from your organization and make sure they’re satisfied. Competitors would have a hard time taking happy customers away from you. Know who your competitors are and keep an eye on them. Most organizations do a poor job of track their current and potential competitors.”

-Don Hall, principal at DeltaSigma a healthcare consulting firm in Littleton, Colorado, and Managed Healthcare Executive editorial advisor

2. Prioritize R&D

“An emphasis on future development is critical to stay ahead of competition. We work closely with our parent company, NTT Group, which has an annual R&D budget of $2 billion. If you are only looking at the current state, you’ll be playing catch up, while initiatives such as artificial intelligence, mobile health and augmented reality only become more prominent.”

-Shashi Yadiki, president, NTT DATA Health Plan, Healthcare & Life Science, a top 10 global business and IT services provider with 120,000+ professionals in more than 50 countries and a division of NTT Group, a partner to more than 88 of the Fortune 100, headquartered in Tokyo

3. Make culture a priority

“A positive employee culture and business go hand in hand. Employees who are highly engaged at work have higher performance, leading to increased customer loyalty, more brand recognition, and better company results. However, to have a successful culture, your employees need to feel like they have a voice in how the company operates and decisions that affect them. Make sure you’re seeking their feedback and implementing meaningful change.”

-Kevin Ricklefs, chief culture officer, CHG Healthcare, a healthcare staffing company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah

4. Focus on the patient experience

“Consumers of healthcare are highly satisfied when they have access to providers in a barrier free environment that allows them to get answers to their concerns quickly and easily. They also need to be able to reconnect as needed in an ongoing fashion. Healthcare can be complicated, but the clinical relationship shouldn’t be.”

-John Dutton, MD, FACEP, medical director, CirrusMD, chat-first virtual care platform, based in Denver

5. Partner with disruptors

“From startups to forward-looking clients, NTT DATA is focused on aiding industry leaders as they explore disruptive ideas. However, you can’t boil the ocean, nor assume you already have all the answers. Leverage pilots and proof-of-concepts to test the viability of solutions, which will help you gain a better understanding of the impact of particular technologies on healthcare professionals and patients.”

-Yadiki

6. Keep up with technology

“The pace of change in technology, data, and user expectations makes adaptation a key competitive differentiator. Keeping up with the speed of the cloud means reinventing products every 12 to 24 months. Health executives must look forward to ensure they continually have relevant solutions that meet the market.”

-Travis Good, MD, co-founder & chief technology officer, Datica, a complete, cloud-based platform that mitigates the complexity and risk of integrating and using health data in the cloud, located in Minneapolis

7. Balance AI tech and human touch

“Despite all the talk about healthcare consumerism, successful executives acknowledge the uniquely important patient/provider relationship. They know to use AI technologies to enrich the patient experience by ensuring that each communication touch-point matches precisely to the preference of the individual receiving it. In the zeal to enhance the patient experience, one should not be pushing technology and AI boundaries too far-especially with patient communication. Balance is key." 

-Nagi Prabhu, chief product officer, Solutionreach, a patient relationship management company headquartered in Lehi, Utah

8. Live a healthy lifestyle

“Your health is fundamental to maintaining a competitive edge. Clear thinking, stamina, and creativity are all enhanced if you’re feeling fit and motivated. Follow the absolutes of healthy behavior:

• No smoking

• Wear a seatbelt

• Keep your BMI between 18.0 and 24.9 (Google “Body Mass Index” for a quick calculation)

• Exercise at least 30 minutes five times a week

• Eat five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.”

-Louis Bezich, author of “Crack the Code: 10 Proven Secrets that Motivate Healthy Behavior and Inspire Fulfillment in Men Over 50,” and senior vice president of Strategic Alliances with Cooper University Health Care, located in Southern New Jersey and Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania and adjunct professor, Rutgers University

9. Keep your eye on the patient

“In today’s healthcare market, widespread industry consolidation and revenue-focused business strategies register as trends. However, at a time when healthcare costs continue to rise, it is critical that healthcare executives and providers truly focus on the patient-providing high-quality, cost-effective care. Independent practices are leading the way in the transformation to a value-based care environment, filling much-needed gaps in care, providing coordinated care and supporting preventative measures that avoid high-cost hospitalization.”

-Scott Fowler, JD, MD, CEO and president, Holston Medical Group, a multi-specialty regional medical group in northeast Tennessee; southwest Virginia; and the North Charlotte/Lake Norman, North Carolina area

10. Enhance patient care

“Healthcare professionals have a significant opportunity to differentiate against the competition by enhancing patient care through innovative and clinically actionable molecular genetic testing. Partnering with a national laboratory service provider, molecular genetic testing enables providers to practice precision medicine by incorporating an individual’s genetic profile and other diagnostics to truly customize medical care, including routine health assessments (STI/WH), disease risk assessments (ICGx), carrier testing, and optimization of drug treatments (PGx) … molecular genetic testing can dramatically improve health outcomes”

-Christian Fletcher, CEO, LifeBrite Laboratories, an accredited, national medical laboratory services provider located in Atlanta

11. Know your why

“Having a clear sense of personal purpose goes hand-in-hand with a healthy lifestyle. Whether it’s your spouse, children, grandchildren, or whatever, having firm grip on your why provides the underlying drive for your professional pursuits. Bottom line, mental toughness drives the behavior which is the recipe for sustaining success and beating the competition.”

-Bezich

12. Expand real-time analytics capabilities

“By integrating real-time data insights into the IT support desk, hospital leaders have greater transparency into EHR utilization across the organization. This clarity can pinpoint spikes in departmental workflow or access issues and identify repeated end-user errors. Through EHR incident analysis, health IT leaders can proactively discern end-user education gaps, which can curb clinical care delays and EHR burnout. This combination translates into streamlined workflow, higher staff productivity and maximized EHR use for ROI.”

-Sheri Stoltenberg, founder and CEO of Stoltenberg Consulting, Inc., a strategic healthcare IT consulting and partial IT outsourcing firm located in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

13. Focus on the essentials

“In order to remain differentiated, we have focused exclusively on what is essential for our partner healthcare organizations: improvement in outcomes. Without demonstrable clinical outcomes, all digital health/therapeutics do is tick an innovation box.”

-Ken Cahill, CEO at SilverCloud Health, the leading digital mental health company, located in Boston, MA

14. Focus on the future

“While learning from the past. By maintaining a dialogue with research teams and industry analysts, executives can be mindful of trends that will shape the future of healthcare. Also, by analyzing societal problems, such as the scarcity of water in parts of India, it can spur innovation through the discussion of specific challenges and potential solutions-as well as how those insights might influence technological advances.”

-Yadiki

15. Invest in innovation

“The future of health care is limitless. As it evolves at a rapid pace, it’s critical to invest in innovation and technology that will make an impact in the communities we serve. We’re proactively looking to disrupt the industry and distinguish our network in the region; for example at our state-of-the-art medical center opening this fall, we’re investing in SmartRoom technology that will elevate the patient experience and quality of care, as well as energy efficiency initiatives-including solar panels-that will have a lasting environmental impact in South Jersey.”

-John DiAngelo, president & CEO of Inspira Health, a charitable nonprofit health care organization with more than 150 access points across Southern New Jersey

16. Gain a holistic patient view

“All too often, clinical care teams have limited visibility to a patient’s symptoms, only seeing a small piece of the puzzle. Electronic patient reported outcome (ePROs) solutions like Noona provide an intuitive app-based user interface to empower patients to easily ask questions and communicate symptoms with their care team during treatment, recovery and post-treatment. This ultimately helps clinicians better manage patient symptoms, and ultimately, increase clinical efficiency.”

-Jani Ahonala, senior director of life sciences at Varian, a leader in developing and delivering cancer care solutions, headquartered in Palo Alto, California