Critical Need for Efficiency amidst Ongoing Resource Shortages and Rising Demand Drive Global Hospital Command Centers Market

Medtech Vendors’ Growth Strategies to Support Hospitals’ ROI and Margin Improvement in a Post-COVID-19 Era

Globally, the difficulty in operating large hospitals is made worse by the use of manual operations and processes that often lead to a host of inefficiencies. The COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020 brought these inefficiencies to the fore, and as a lasting impact, hospitals must now address the backlog of outpatient, imaging, and surgery patients. The only way to effectively do so is to operate over capacity, an imperative for boosting revenues that took a significant hit during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and holds on elective procedures.

Several solutions designed to optimize hospital operations exist in the market, but hospital command centers have taken these tools to another level. With the advent of technologies such as data analytics and advancements such as predictive analytics and digital twins, command centers have evolved into high-tech solutions that empower hospitals to manage several operational areas. Adoption of hospital command centers has steadily risen, but the impact of COVID-19 is likely to increase demand for these solutions further. However, hospitals must also update the management of their clinical processes, workflows, and finances, which is a challenge more so now in a value-based care environment. With reimbursement penalties given for issues such as readmission and patient satisfaction, hospitals are forced to seek support from technology solutions to better manage their clinical protocols and finances.

In this study, Frost & Sullivan discusses how hospital command centers work as tailor-made solutions for hospitals globally to not only manage their operations but also their clinical care variations, risk predictions, and clinical applications, as well as tie in finances to get patient-level details on cost and revenue. The transition to include clinical applications is already witnessed as some command centers incorporate these aspects into various command center models (self-built, virtual, public health); it is likely that the concept will soon evolve into an end-to-end hospital management center, beyond operations as it exists today. This effectively means that every single hospital vendor and stakeholder providing digital data (operational, clinical, or financial) will eventually enter the scope of the command center, either by a partnership or simple integration of the data into the larger framework. It is important, therefore, to understand how the command center will evolve in the near future and how vendors can become part of this movement.

Key Issues Addressed

• What are hospital command centers and how are they expected to evolve with time?
• What is the current adoption status of hospital command centers and how will adoption increase in the post-COVID-19 era?
• Which vendors offer these solutions and what are the business and pricing models they follow?
• How and where should hospitals begin when thinking about command centers?
• What are the regional trends for hospital command centers and which regions are likely to grow the fastest in adopting this concept?