2022 Healthcare Trends:

6 Defining Areas
Bobbi Brown SVP, Professional Services Health Catalyst
Stephen Grossbart SVP, Professional Services Health Catalyst

With the New York Times summing up the predominate feeling • Integrated data unlocks the highest value use cases.
of 2021 as “languishing,” 2022 begins with a mix of uncertainty • Reusable data multiplies the data value.
and concern but also optimism. Healthcare and society at large • Transparent data builds trust, avoiding a “black box”
are eager for a positive post-pandemic future. Moving into this distrust of data.
next phase, 2022 healthcare trends in six areas stand to shape • Aggregated data enables benchmarking.
healthcare delivery and policy and patient and provider • Application data is highly valuable and should be
experience moving forward: health equity, patient safety, reusable.
staffing, care delivery, COVID 19, and payment and payers. • Data quality is foundational to trust and the use of data.

But what does “moving forward” mean on an industry level? If

healthcare follows the lead of other sectors in to 2022 and How Will the Healthcare Industry
beyond, leaders will stress long-range strategies (e.g., 10-year
plans) that prioritize consumers and data-driven decision
Excel in 2022? Six 2022 Healthcare
making. Trends to Watch
Healthcare’s 2022 Strategy: As healthcare organizations work to embrace some of the key
drivers of success behind top-ranked brands, such as a
consumer-centric approach and a commitment to high-value
Following the Lead of Other High-Performing Industries data, trends in six areas will differentiate the highest performing
Multinational beverage conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev health systems from the rest.
(AB InBev), which projected growth between 10 and 12
percent in 2021 and continued expansion between 4 and 8 #1: Health Equity
percent in 2022, is taking a consumer-centric value approach
into 2022. AB InBev has stated a commitment to a “future with In 2019, 25 percent of healthcare organizations rated health
more cheers,” which the company describes as “a equity as one of their top priorities. In 2021, health equity rose
company-wide purpose to dream big about the future we want to 58 percent, while other measured areas (safety, health, value,
to shape and how we can do our part to realize it.” improvement, science, and joy in work) were relatively
stable—placing equity as a frontrunner in industry priorities for
The organization plans to realize this future by moving from a 2022.
traditional growth strategy around cost management and
generation and mergers-and-acquisitions (M&A)-driven growth To that end, organizations are developing robust frameworks to
to new consumer-centric approach. AB InBev’s revamped establish and sustain equity. For example, the following two
purpose focuses on superior value for customers, largely frameworks place health equity firmly in the workflow:
enabled through digital technology that will sell directly to the
retailers and the consumers. • The Bay Area Regional Health and Equities Initiative
(upper left, Figure 1) framework focuses on and
Other high-performing brands in 2021, according to the measures the areas in the circle, the social and
Drucker Institute ranking, include top-five companies institutional inequities and living conditions.
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, IBM, and Intel. These organizations • Another framework, a Community Health Needs
have survived the pandemic well and share a commitment to Assessment (CNHA), identifies key community health
innovation. Health Catalyst sees companies prioritize needs and issues through systematic, comprehensive
high-value data with the following understanding: data collection and analysis. This example comes from

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 UPMC (lower right, Figure 1). The framework looks at a three-year plan, including demographics and community needs
assessments focuses on chronic conditions, behavioral health, health access, and prevention.

Figure 1: Health equity framework examples.

The above frameworks focus on understanding community On the organizational level, organizations can follow six action
needs—a key driver in health equity. And many organizations items around equity prioritization in 2022:
are making similar priorities. For example, more than 75
companies have signed the Digital Health Equity Pledge, an 1. Review the organization’s CHNA.
initiative by Executives for Health Innovation, to look as equity 2. Ensure goals are meaningful.
issues including accessibility, diversity, respect, and relevant 3. Identify partners.
public policy. 4. Evaluate value-based contracts and review the
measures tracked.
CMS has also joined healthcare leaders with a focus on health 5. Track metrics and measures that impact the
equity and is helping drive related trends. For example, in the community.
finalized 2022 Inpatient Perspective Payment rule, CMS asks 6. Report the above outcomes and learn from mistakes
for comments from stakeholders on the potential future and successes.
reporting on structural measures to assess hospital leadership
engagement in health equity performance data. In other #2: Care Delivery
words, CMS has informed stakeholders that they’re going to
assess how closely CEOs and other leaders look at health Significant shifts in care delivery in 2020 and 2021 will continue
equity and use it to drive and improve performance. CMS will into 2022. Notably, the healthcare model moved outside the
ultimately tie equity assessment into the payment systems that walls of the hospital and into virtual care settings, as facilities
drive healthcare business. met capacity during COVID-19. In 2020, CMS issued a waiver
for acute care at home, and as of fall 2021, approved 175
Furthermore, CMS has already positioned data to support hospitals to provide at-home acute care.
health equity prioritization. Like many payers, CMS supports
using Z codes. Payers use these ICD-10-CM codes to document The shift to at-home care appears to be gaining momentum.
social determinants of health data (e.g., housing, food For example, early in 2022, major healthcare organizations,
insecurity, and transportation) to understand community including Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic, invested $110
needs and opportunities for change. million in a company called Medically Home, which facilitates
and coordinates treatment for high-acuity patients in their
homes.

The Advisory Board further supports the forecasted care

delivery shift away from the hospital. The consulting firm
predicts that between 2022 and 2027, outpatient knee surgery
will expand from 6.5 to 36 percent of cases, 20 percent of the
current outpatient medical visits will be virtual, and
home-based hospital care will increase from 1 to 30 percent.

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Consistent with the site-of-care shifts in 2020 and 2021 has Moving the cost and quality dial in 2022 will require health
been growth in the telehealth space. CMS waivers temporarily systems to leverage data and analytics and an adaptive
expanded telehealth services during COVID-19. While overall problem-solving approach. At the same time, organizations can
part B Medicare population care declined 11 percent in volume take the following action around patient safety:
from 2019 to 2020, telehealth visits went from 840,000 to 53
million in that same period. 1. Re-enforce infection prevention practices.
2. Leverage augmented intelligence (AI) and predictive
With digital technology and workflows rising among models in risk prediction.
stakeholders (from payers to pharma), patient-centered care 3. Re-set goals with updates needed for new protocols.
becomes more critical. Actions around care delivery in 2022 4. Gathering information and closing gaps.
will center on engagement:
#4: COVID-19 Response
1. Know the customer, or patient, engagement strategy.
2. Consider how to excite customers, simplify healthcare With COVID-19’s vast changes on the world overall and
encounters, and improve patient health. healthcare, the pandemic has reshaped many areas of society
3. Identify key metrics to track for patient engagement and the industry. With ongoing waves of variants and health
efforts (e.g., increase in number of telehealth visits). systems still confronting capacity issues and predicted losses
4. Understand what drive a better consumer experience. for hospitals in 2021 reaching $54 billion, COVID-19’s economic
5. Have a plan to assess the patient’s condition and impact will shape healthcare through 2022 and beyond. The
navigate patients to the right interventions. pandemic also drove an increase of almost 10 percent in
6. Identify what investments will drive better care at the national healthcare spending and a 36 percent increase in
right site (e.g., hospital or home) for that care. federal expenditures.

#3: Patient Safety and Quality Looking forward into 2022, inflation is at 7 percent, the highest
in 40 years. Meanwhile, M&A revenue was up 25 percent in
COVID-19 dramatically impacted patient safety and quality. By 2021 from 2020, with more anticipated in 2022 Significant
the fourth quarter of 2020, the number of hospital-acquired organizations, such as, Oracle, Cerner, and HCA are acquiring
infections had increased—in particular central line-associated new entities while others are merging to accommodate new
bloodstream infection (up 47 percent), catheter associated care delivery models, such as the growth in ambulatory
urinary tract infections (up almost 19 percent), and notable surgery.
rises in ventilator-associated events, MRSA, and others.
The above increases make sense, as patients have been sicker Hospital operating margins fell in 2021, with more losses
during the pandemic, with more people on central lines, predicted in 2022, while the CARES Act provided some relief to
catheters, and ventilators. Concurrently, volumes have hospitals between 2020 and 2021—at least $70 billion. In
overwhelmed staff and lowered clinician-to-patient ratios. And Figure 2, from the Kaufman Hall December 2021 National
with many people avoiding routine care, preventive Hospital Flash Report, the yellow bar shows operating margin
appointments, such as cancer screenings, have declined. For with CARES Act dollars, and the blue bar is without CARES
example, breast cancer screening was down almost 91 percent money. As the graph shows, margins are coming back but
from 2019 to 2020. To what extent COVID-19 undermined haven’t yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
cancer prevention in 2020 remains to be seen but will likely
impact healthcare in 2022.

As an aside, surgical-site infections have declined during the

pandemic, in part due to the reduction in elective surgeries.
Meanwhile, hospital-acquired Clostridioides difficile (C. diff)
has also declined in conjunction with COVID-19, with a
decrease in people admitted with community C. diff.

Moving forward, the United States has work ahead to bridge

its safety and quality gaps—regardless of the pandemic.
Relative to countries with similar socioeconomic status, the
U.S. spends close to 17 percent of its gross domestic product
on healthcare, which is nearly double what the rest of the
industrial world spends. And at the same time, objective
measures of quality are lower in the United States.

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 Figure 2: National margin results—with and without CARES dollars.

Another notable COVID-19 healthcare business impact has #5: Staffing

been the cost of not getting vaccinated. According to the Kaiser
Family Foundation, insufficient vaccinations as of June through Healthcare is facing a crumbling workforce coming into 2022.
November 2021 cost U.S. hospitals almost $14 billion in September 2021 saw the highest quit rates among U.S. worker,
waste—waste meaning hospitalizations that could have been with 4.4 million leaving their jobs. In healthcare, estimates say
avoided and the societal impact, lost work, lost family, and two in five nurses and one in four physicians want to exit the
mortality related to not getting vaccinated. profession in the next two years.

Moving into 2022, healthcare can take the following actions to At the same time, demand for healthcare workers is projected
navigate COVID-19’s ongoing impact: to grow by 45 percent between 2020 and 2030, forcing
healthcare to evaluate its workforce supply strategy.
1. Take a proactive approach to revenue cycle Organizations must look closely at data-driven labor
management and cost (know true costs to provide management to predict and manage labor needs and improve
services). workforce experience.
2. Perform financial forecasts on shorter time frame, with
the ability for rolling forecasts as the environment Along with labor management, actions organizations can take
changes. around staffing in 2022 include the following:
3. Perform a capital allocation review.
4. Combine clinical and financial outcomes. 1. Listen to workforce needs and concerns.
5. Double down on patient safety. 2. Share and communicate the data.
3. Consider what flexibility options for the workforce (e.g.,
schedules, roles, care models).
4. Prioritize workforce retention (including address
burnout and ensuring team members feel valued).

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#6: Payment and Payers continue to enforce penalties for price transparency violations
(i.e., organizations that don’t publish all their services and
On the payment and payers front, ACA enrollment has costs by mid 2022).
exceeded 14 million. CMS is reviewing its payment models,
with no new models expected before 2023. Alternative Health systems can navigate the 2022 payment and payer
payment models are stable, with Medicare Advantage and landscape by taking the following actions:
Medicaid growing.
1. Align all parties.
Organizations can expect to see CMS policy support five 2. Review value-based contracts.
strategic objectives behind a health system that delivers 3. Work actively with payers.
equitable outcomes (Figure 3): 4. Focus on improved health with measures for cost and
quality.
1. Drive accountable care.
2. Advance health equity.
3. Support innovation.
From Languishing to Flourishing:
4. Address affordability. Healthcare Can Thrive in 2022
5. Partner to achieve system transformation.
While languishing was a tough diagnosis to close 2021, the
healthcare industry has a clear path for a thriving 2022. Trends
in health equity, patient safety and quality, care delivery,
COVID-19 response, staffing, and payers and payment are
positioned to support continued recovery, rebuilding, and
growth across the industry. Furthermore, as healthcare follows
the lead of top performers in other industries with a
long-range, consumer-centric, strategy the prioritizes
high-value data, patients and providers stand to benefit from
improved outcomes and better experiences.

Additional Reading
Would you like to learn more about this topic? Here are some
Figure 3: Five strategic objectives around payment and payer. articles we suggest:

2021 Healthcare Trends: What Leaders Need to Know from

Additionally, CMS will make changes to measures, adjusting COVID-19 to New Administration Policies
the way it calculates and uses some of its measures. For
example, CMS is removing COVID-19 patients for quality 2021 Asia-Pacific Healthcare Trends: Growing Digitization,
measures and, in some cases, not basing dollars on Universal Health Coverage, and More
pandemic-related events, such as pneumonia readmissions.
CMS is also adding a reporting requirement for maternal Healthcare Trends During COVID-19: Top Five Areas to Watch
health in 2022 to encourage hospitals to participate in
collaborative programs to improve maternal outcomes. The Top Three 2020 Healthcare Trends and How to Prepare

With healthcare costs remaining high, leaders can anticipate Value-Based Purchasing 2020: A 10-Year Progress Report
that CMS will continue or expand its review of data and linkage
to quality-based payments. CMS will continue down the path
towards value-based care, increased affordability, and reduced
spending. A notable shift for 2022 will embedding health
equity in these efforts, per the strategic objectives in Figure 3.

Payers appear to be working closely with providers to best

serve their communities. Such consumer-centric approaches
include legislation around price transparency, such as the No
Surprise Act, which took effect January 2022. CMS will also

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