McKinsey January 5, 2024
A new perspective on how technology, transformation efforts, and other changes have affected payers, health systems, healthcare services and technology, and pharmacy services.
The acute strain from labor shortages, inflation, and endemic COVID-19 on the healthcare industry’s financial health in 2022 is easing. Much of the improvement is the result of transformation efforts undertaken over the last year or two by healthcare delivery players, with healthcare payers acting more recently. Even so, health-system margins are lagging behind their financial performance relative to prepandemic levels. Skilled nursing and long-term-care profit pools continue to weaken. Eligibility redeterminations in a strong employment economy have hurt payers’ financial performance in the Medicaid segment. But Medicare Advantage and individual segment economics have held up well...