Healthcare systems are under enormous strain as the growing demand from aging and sicker populations, as well as expanding medical capabilities increases. Simultaneously, shrinking labor pools limit capacity and increase delivery costs.
Under-resourced systems face challenges such as declining care quality, escalating liability risks, decreased employee morale, and deteriorating institutional reputations.Ìý
Technology advances play a crucial role in enhancing financial, operational, and strategic resilience:Ìý
- Evolving technologies like generative AI can improve productivity, automate tasks to cut costs, build buffers for future crises, and fund resilience investments.
- Digital solutions such as tele-health and automated decision support tools can boost operational efficiencies, increase flexibly to meet growing demand, improve capacity utilization, and care quality, and mitigate disruption risk during crises.
- Technologies can put healthcare demand and costs on a sustainable trajectory by enabling proactive and personalized care for more effective disease prevention and management, and by improving connectivity and coordination across institutions.
However, new technology introduces new risks for healthcare systems by amplifying current risk drivers, extending risk interactions, and triggering risk cascades:
- AI and other technologies can increase liability risks for health institutions in batch events where multiple patients are affected by the same cause.
- Technology risks can arise from leaders, managers, and clinicians unaware of machine limitations, assigning inappropriate responsibilities, relying on machine outputs without critical evaluation, and failing to anticipate failures and their impacts.
Healthcare systems and institutions need to mitigate and manage these and other risks and understand the limitations of technologies. Anticipating how, where, and when risks could manifest and being alert to possible knock-on impacts is crucial to adapt risk transfer and response playbooks.
Even the best modern technologies face roadblocks to deployment. To realize their full potential, institutions need to analyze and work to overcome the barriers, which include:
- User hesitancy or resistance, knowledge and skill gaps, and fear of disruption or role changes.
- Outdated technological infrastructures that can delay implementation and limit data sharing, process standardization, and care coordination.
- Poor functionality and cumbersome experience due to not involving intended users during design, development, testing, and monitoring phases.
- Sub-optimal deployment due to a failure to invest in continuous learning and upskilling of clinical and non-clinical staff as technology capabilities evolve.
Healthcare systems should embrace technological opportunities to help augment staff, expand provisions, improve patient experience and outcomes, and ensure financial viability.
By assessing the risks associated with and without their deployment, healthcare organizations can optimize their use to cut costs, enhance crisis preparedness, and reduce community health vulnerabilities.
From risks to resilience
Use this report to:
- Gain insights into technology transformation in healthcare
- Develop a deeper understanding of how to enhance operational efficiency and care quality
- Learn how to optimize your technology deployments and overcome barriers
Report FAQs
What risks do healthcare organizations face when implementing new technologies, including artificial intelligence and generative AI?
AI and other technologies may exacerbate existing risk exposures for health institutions, including professional and institutional liability risks related to batch events. These challenges may be created or exacerbated when leaders, managers, and clinicians fail to appreciate the limitations of systems, rely on technologies to perform tasks that are beyond their capabilities, rely on machine outputs that are not properly assessed, and neglect to anticipate potential failures and how they could impact the organization.
What are the barriers that healthcare institutions could face when deploying new technologies?
Senior leaders may face a number of challenges, including hesitancy or resistance from their people, knowledge and skill gaps, as well as fears of disruption or role changes. An old and fragmented technological infrastructure may complicate the seamless integration of new systems. New technologies may also fail to deliver the expected benefits or have poor functionality that contributes to a cumbersome user experience. Further, failure to invest in continuous learning and upskilling of staff may negatively impact the deployment of a new technology.
How can technology advancements help healthcare systems boost their financial, operational, and strategic resilience?
Rapidly evolving technologies, such as generative AI, may improve workers’ productivity, including by automating certain tasks, which could help organizations cut costs and ease financial strain. Digital solutions, like telehealth and automated decision support tools, may deliver operational efficiencies, expand capacity, improve quality of care, and help organizations navigate potential crises. In the long term, technologies may also facilitate proactive and personalized care and improve coordination with other institutions, helping to lower costs.
Authors and Contributors
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Marsh
- Daniel Bowden, Chief Information and Security Officer, Marsh
- Giselle Norris, US Healthcare Practice Leader, Marsh
- Hala Helm, Strategic Health Care Risk Advisor, Marsh
- Jaymin Kim, Cyber Emerging Tech Advisor, Marsh
- Kathy Myers, Chief Operating Officer, Health Care Industry Practice, Marsh
- Nicole Francis, Senior Client Advisor, Marsh
- Paula Sullivan, Placement Leader, Marsh
- Philip Dearn, Healthcare Practice Leader, UK, Marsh
- Reid Sawyer, Managing Director, Head Emerging Risks Group, Marsh
- Ruth Kochenderfer, Senior Client Advisor, Marsh
- Stephen Busch, Senior Placement Specialist, Marsh
Mercer
- John Derse, Senior Partner Mercer Healthcare Provider Industry Practice, Mercer
- Tracy Watts, Senior Partner, Market Business Segment Leader, Mercer
- William Self, Partner, Workforce Strategy & Analytics Leader, Mercer
- Caroline Khan, Principal, Lead Business Development Specialist, Mercer
- Ravin Jesuthasan, Senior Partner, Global Transformation Leader, Mercer
- David Mitchell, Partner, Senior Human Resource Transformation (HRT) Consultant, Mercer
Oliver Wyman
- John Lester, Partner, Oliver Wyman Digital,Ìý
Marsh McLennan
- Richard Smith-Bingham, Executive Director, Marsh McLennan Insights
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