Managed Healthcare Executive® State of the Industry Survey, A Look Ahead , First Installment

We changed our annual State of the Industry survey this year. In the past, many of our questions looked back at developments in the past year. We published the results in the December issue.

This year we pivoted and asked questions about the year ahead instead of the year gone by. And it makes more sense to publish the results of a forward-looking survey in January.

We had exactly 100 respondents, although not every respondent answered every question. About one-quarter of the respondents said they worked for hospitals and healthcare systems. A similar proportion indicated that they worked for physician groups. The rest were evenly divided among health plans, consulting firms and other sorts of healthcare companies.

We will be posting results of the survey.

Our first question was a general one: Which will be the most important issues facing American healthcare in the 2022. We gave the respondents eight choices and asked them to rank them on the scale of 1 to 10, with 10 indicating the highest importance. We then summed the rankings, assigning a value of 10 to ranking, a value of 9 to ranking of 9, and so on.

Using this metric for importance, consolidation and labor shortages came out on top, followed by high drug prices, supply chain issues and COVID-19 vaccination rates.

Our survey circulated prior to the peaking of the omicron variant. Perhaps COVID-19 vaccination rates would have ranked higher if people were filling out the survey now.