Healthcare ecosystems—integrated networks that connect providers, patients, technology, and services—are emerging as the key to delivering seamless, consumer-centered care in place of the outdated patient journey. For decades, the healthcare industry operated under a model of owning the entire patient journey, seeking to control every aspect of patient care from urgent care services to specialty treatments. While this strategy worked for a time, it eventually hit a breaking point. The landscape shifted, competitors emerged, the needs of patients evolved, and a need grew for a new model to take place: the healthcare ecosystem.
Why Healthcare Ecosystems Are Reshaping the Patient Journey
Healthcare organizations once believed that owning the patient journey would secure their dominance. However, five key business objectives revealed the flaws in this approach:
- Adopt Urgent Care and Virtual Care Services: Competitors with more resources quickly took the lead, and aside from behavioral health, patient and physician interest in virtual-first models was short-lived.
- Acquire Primary, Outpatient, and Specialty Care: Primary care often operated at a loss, while outpatient and specialty care became administrative and financial burdens. Meanwhile, standalone imaging and surgery centers offered better convenience and lower costs.
- Expand into New Geographic Areas: Remote locations were difficult to support, and recruiting clinical staff in rural areas proved to be a significant challenge. Addressing unmet clinical and social determinants of health (SDoH) needs required resources and partnerships that were often in short supply.
- Open Innovation Centers to Cultivate Digital Health Solutions: The return on investment (ROI) took longer than anticipated, and home-grown solutions often failed to scale. Moreover, talent in fields like data science gravitated towards more lucrative tech sectors.
- Emphasize Value of Owned, End-to-End Service Delivery: Few organizations were prepared for the shift to care at home, which encompasses many phases of the patient journey. These organizations also had little control over how patients accessed care at home or which technology they used.
These failures highlight a larger theme: the strategy of controlling the patient journey focused on delivering high volumes of services, rather than meeting patients’ needs as consumers. This approach contradicted the push from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to move away from fee-for-service models and largely ignored patients’ desires for the right care, from the right provider, at the right time—regardless of the name on the building or the logo on the app.
The Rise of Healthcare Ecosystems
Recognizing the limitations of the traditional model, forward-thinking healthcare organizations are now reimagining their strategies. Rather than attempting—and often failing—to own the entire patient journey, these organizations are focusing on owning the consumer experience.
What does this mean? Instead of trying to build or buy everything they need, these organizations are leveraging their existing strengths, such as brand awareness and longstanding relationships, while collaborating with best-of-breed partners to complement their offerings. This approach allows them to create ecosystems of care—integrated networks of services that enable patients to address all their healthcare needs conveniently and with the support of a trusted organization.
By building strategic partnerships, healthcare organizations can work alongside their previously disruptive competitors, mutually enhancing the healthcare experience. In essence, these organizations become the first and trusted point of contact for patients who need care, while the ecosystem provides a seamless connection between services.
The Benefits of Healthcare Ecosystems
The true power of healthcare ecosystems lies in their ability to connect data, solutions, and services on a single platform. This integration creates rich datasets that allow organizations to gain insights into who their patients are and what they need. Rather than waiting for patients to engage, organizations can proactively reach out with evidence-based recommendations for where, when, and how patients can receive the care they require.
Because everything within the ecosystem is connected, patients can easily choose services within the network to meet their ongoing care needs. This creates a continuous loop of care that improves patient outcomes and enhances the overall healthcare experience.
The Promise of Healthcare Ecosystems
The concept of healthcare ecosystems is not new, but it has gained traction in recent years as a solution to the industry’s most pressing challenges. Two years ago, Deloitte highlighted the benefits of healthcare platforms in fostering partnerships with community-based organizations, supporting plug-and-play point solutions, and enabling shared savings arrangements that reduce operational costs.
Earlier this year, McKinsey took this conversation further, arguing that ecosystems should be the foundation of a patient-centered healthcare system. The consultancy pointed to three key reasons why ecosystems are critical:
- Consumers Are Willing to Shop for Health Services: Traditional brick-and-mortar healthcare organizations often fall short in providing after-hours care and trusted recommendations for wellness services.
- Consumers Trust Healthcare Organizations with Their Data: Despite this trust, organizations fail to leverage data effectively to create personalized engagement and outreach strategies.
- Consumers Are Becoming More Educated: While consumers are increasingly informed about their healthcare options, they struggle to access the data they need to make informed decisions.
These insights reinforce the potential of healthcare ecosystems to meet the needs of patients who are more conscious of their options than ever before. By uniting data, services, and solutions on a single platform, healthcare ecosystems can provide best-in-class care and create a patient-centered experience that aligns with the demands of modern healthcare consumers.
The Future of Healthcare Lies in Ecosystems
Healthcare ecosystems are the future. These integrated networks offer a more effective, patient-centered approach by connecting data, solutions, and services to deliver seamless care experiences. For healthcare organizations looking to stay ahead, embracing the ecosystem model isn’t just an option—it’s a necessity. The time to rethink strategy and collaborate is now, and those who do will be well-positioned to lead in this new era of healthcare.
