Health Care Industry

Today, Health Care is on everyone's minds. Whether you are a payor, a provider or a consumer of health care services it is clear that changes must be made to our overall system to ensure quality care and positive outcomes while containing costs.

We believe some of the key concepts that will help move the system to greater affordability, accessibility and effectiveness are:

• Operational optimization – Though some observers believe that payors and providers have already taken the fat out of operations, we believe there are still significant opportunities for process improvement in almost all organizations. The Willow Group takes a collaborative approach to working with all stakeholders to quickly understand and document the current state; identify key issues, opportunities and risks; perform analysis; and solve problems in process areas that need to be optimized to provide greater efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and control.

• Wellness coaching, disease management and case management – Working to prevent disease or mitigate the effects of a chronic condition is an effective approach to cost containment in the health care industry. It is also a compassionate approach to lessening suffering in our communities. Improved methods for disease and case management are critical for better patient outcomes. To do this well, requires ways to effectively connect a complex web of consumers, caregivers (clinics, hospitals, social agencies–governmental and non-governmental, family, etc.) and payors. To support this, The Willow Group is focusing on delivering innovative solutions that capture more data at the source and provide better transparency into processes. These approaches provide researchers and providers with information needed for adjusting therapies and evolving more effective protocols and supports payors and providers in better serving the health care consumer.

• Consumer service and empowerment – In recent years, consumer-driven health plans have been promoted as a means to combat the twin problems of decreasing coverage and increasing costs in the US health care delivery system. The efficacy of this approach is still being hotly debated. However, The Willow Group does believe that consumer empowerment that goes beyond the ability to make choices regarding health plans to adopting practices that support such things as the maintenance of personal health records, transmitting data from homes, and performing some caregiver visits over the phone or via live video will make a difference in positive outcomes and ultimately reduce costs.

E-mail or call us for more information on how we can deliver solutions to support you in these critical areas.