DIY Revenue Streams
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Many health systems are creating new revenue streams by developing and selling services.
Faced with cuts and restraints imposes by the ACA, healthcare institutions are looking way new ways to increase revenue streams. Many have found the creation and marketing of services a viable solution.
One example is provided by The Cleveland Clinic, which is teaming up with Dell to offer Epic EMR consulting, installation, configuration, and hosting services to other health systems and practices across the country. The collaboration between the Cleveland Clinic and Dell's Healthcare and Life Sciences unit was announced at the HIMSS14 convention in Orlando, as Health IT Outcomes reported.
And this isn’t the first time that the Cleveland Clinic has capitalized on its own expertise in the form of consulting services. To generate revenue, the clinic also created the Healthcare Innovation Alliance, a seven-member consortium that leverages its commercialization expertise to help other institutions turn their employees’ medical inventions into commercial products. As the market for first-time electronic health record system buyers is narrowing, healthcare systems need to find new markets to provide revenue stream.
Health IT Outcomes also reports Johns Hopkins is following the same business model, developing a new patient remote monitoring tool that combines video, email, and texts to improve patient care. Created as a Johns Hopkins Hospital training program for healthcare workers in treating HIV in Uganda, the tool has evolved into a multimedia platform for adherence, clinical trials, and chronic diseases rolled into a healthcare startup, Emocha. In a presentation at DreamIt Health Baltimore’s demo day, CEO Sebastian Seiguer talked about the company’s origins at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and its relevance for both developing and industrialized countries.
A third alternative revenue stream covered by Health IT Outcomes is occurring at The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center which is selling analytics aimed at helping doctors deliver procedures at low costs.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has announced plans to sell its analytics software which, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, is designed to help physicians choose the most cost effective treatments for the best patient outcomes.
“The implications for patients, clinicians, and UPMC are sweeping – from better understanding of where and why variations in patient care are occurring to figuring out where best to invest limited capital. Until now, these decisions were based on industry-wide cost estimates that often bore little resemblance to reality,” said UPMC in a press release.
As more and more health systems feel strapped to find new sources of revenue, the industry is likely to see additional forays into the DIY mode. By developing and selling their own services directly to consumers, they will be able to draw revenue into their system and raise their cash flow significantly.