New PwC Paper Looks Ahead into the Future of Pharma

Continuing cost pressures and new customer demands require a fresh look at existing roles of industry players.

A new paper from PwC, entitled “Top Health Industry Issues of 2011,” foretells of change in the coming year due to health reform and other issues that are keeping the industry on its toes.

“The new health reform law will prompt most organizations to do strategy makeovers  as they react to and prepare for new rules and payment models in 2011,” says the opening line of the PwC report. “Industry changes wrought by health reform are far from over. In fact, they’ve only just begun.”

For this Top Industry Health Issues report, PwC’s Health Research Institute asked consumers their point of view on several issues related to reform. Of those surveyed, 50 percent said they would stay within an ACO-like organization for all of their care, and nearly three-fourths said they would trade employer-sponsored insurance for higher pay. Less than half of consumers know what a health insurance exchange is, and 86 percent do not access their medical records electronically.

Also of note is the fact that more than one-third of consumers said that costs and waiting times would increase as a result of healthcare mergers. The survey also found that consumers seek health information from media companies more than from government, healthcare companies, and consumer companies combined.

Other key issues discussed at some length in the report include health information technology (HIT), medical loss ratios (MLRs) and insurance exchanges, accountable care organizations (ACOs), rising deductibles in health insurance plans, and mergers and acquisitions. These and many other issues form the changing landscape of Pharma over the next few years.