It can be a real challenge to keep up with the fast-paced and ever-changing healthcare and MedTech industries. To help you stay current on new technologies, emerging trends, research, and other news that will impact your MedTech business in 2019, here’s a list of the best healthcare news sites.

The world of healthcare is always evolving and changing. Like any industry, healthcare sees its fair share of mergers and acquisitions every year. Consolidation of smaller hospitals and the growth of mega healthcare organizations has been a sustained trend in the last few years. Mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity is also the prime ingredient for growth in healthcare. Is the mega-hospital the future of healthcare? Or, will M&A cool off a bit in 2019? Let’s explore the opportunities for 2019 M&A.

Integrated delivery networks (IDNs) have carved out a place for themselves in the healthcare industry. An IDN (in the recent past also called integrated health network [IHN] or multihospital system [MHS]) is a network of healthcare providers and facilities within a specific geographic region that offers a full range of healthcare services. An IDN is often designed to offer a full spectrum of care inclusive of primary care physicians, specialists, general acute care (i.e. inpatient services), and home health services.
​
Like accountable care organizations (ACOs), IDNs exist to coordinate patient care, improve the quality of care, and control costs. Unlike ACOs, which may not work with group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and may not contract directly with local employer group plans, IDNs have negotiating power. Their negotiating power comes in two forms.

Your MedTech company’s success is directly tied to your clients’ success. The healthcare organizations benefiting most from your systems or services need to maintain an adequate patient volume — and adequate revenues — to operate and continue to use your products. Patient leakage (i.e., patients seeking care or receiving referrals outside of a healthcare organization or outside of an expected catchment area) can threaten your clients’ ability to maintain volumes which impacts their viability, and in turn, could create a negative impact on your bottom line.

According to a study by referral management platform Fibroblast, 87 percent of healthcare executives consider patient leakage extremely or very important, although about one in five healthcare organizations do not understand where and why leakage occurs. In addition, 43 percent of healthcare executives say they’re losing more than 10 percent of annual revenues due to patient leakage.

Understanding where patients come from — and where they go — will provide valuable insights that you and your clients can use to make business decisions that lead to greater patient volume and greater profitability.

​An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) plays an important role in reducing costs and re-aligning incentives across the healthcare system to encourage less focus on the volume of services delivered and emphasize the quality and outcomes of the services delivered. ACOs have the potential to revolutionize healthcare, but what exactly are ACOs, and why should they matter to you?

One common thread between the various organizations we work with at Carevoyance, is that they all have to maintain their own directories of physician and facility partners, opportunities and contacts in order to stay competitive. Losing track of physicians as they move jobs, cities or even careers is a huge competitive and revenue exposure. Thus, accuracy of these directories is not only vital for patient outcomes (device service alerts, recalls), but also for marketing (new product launches, updates), and sales.