PWC Discusses Top 7 Healthcare Industry Trends

The healthcare industry is dauntingly complex and changing by the minute. Understandably, even students armed with an MBA often have only a limited grasp of the overall sector and can be unaware of some of the unique career paths available to them.

Even healthcare professionals may know little about the industry apart from their own area of expertise. To complicate matters is the fact that the various “players” —providers, payers, life-science companies, employers and consumers — often communicate very poorly with one another.

Enter Emory’s Goizueta Business School alumnus Jeff Q. Booth 84BBA-94MBA, a director in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Health Industries Advisory Practice, who’s out to promote broad-based dialogue among students, professors, clinicians and others. Led by Booth, PwC recently launched a speakers’ series on healthcare at Goizueta.

Given its large, multifaceted health operation, Emory is an ideal place for such a forum, says Booth. “The vision is to provide perspective for students, create dialogue across industry sectors, and promote collaboration of thought.”

Benjamin Isgur, assistant director of PwC’s Health Research Institute, and Booth spoke at the first event held in January. The two reviewed the “Top Seven Health Industry Trends in 2007” before a crowd of 125 and led a lively discussion session afterward.

“What we do know is that the current state of healthcare is not sustainable … and that the industry has to connect better with the consumer to survive and thrive,” Isgur said.

The top trend? In the absence of federal action, states are seizing the initiative on many fronts, including covering the uninsured and funding stem cell research.

Six other major trends identified by PwC research:

• Providers face increasing pressure to provide more information to consumers on the cost and quality of health care. Transparency is today’s watchword.
• Electronic medical record-keeping — critical to boosting efficiencies — is advancing but at a sluggish pace. Much work remains to be done.
• More and more employers are adopting “consumer-driven” health plans as a way to curtail costs. The plans often package a high deductible with a health savings account, and stress preventive care.
• Generic drugs are on the rise, posing challenges to large pharmaceutical companies.
• Providers and insurers are waging war on obesity, mirroring efforts to reduce smoking years ago.
• Small is big. Surgery centers and small specialty hospitals are increasing in number, and venture capitalists are channeling more funds to these sectors, as well as to small biotech firms to speed innovation.—Tom Barry