2021 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

Print > Feature Article > 10 or More Issues per Year > Upper Midwest

Awarded to

Rich Daly, Senior Editor

Entry details

Healthcare organizations prepare for sicker patients in 2021 due to deferred care

Issue or publication date: December 2020
Publication name: hfm
Publishing/parent company: HFMA
Website home page: hfma.org

About the publication's mission and readership:

https://www.hfma.org/about-hfma.html

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

The idea for the article came from several interviews the author had conducted on unrelated subjects that also fell within the realm of healthcare finance. The concept — that thousands or even millions of chronically ill patients have been going without needed care due to COVID-19 fears — was raised by sources repeatedly during interviews about other issues.

The target audience was hospital and health plan finance leaders responsible for their organization’s financial survival. Although the experts who provided insight for the article have anticipated that this issue would arise, it has been almost completely uncovered in either the mainstream or trade press.

A primary challenge in researching the story was measuring data, given that the extent of the problem had taken many months to emerge. Another challenge was finding the select people who are modeling the problem and projecting specific financial effects for different types of healthcare organizations.

Reporting on this forward-looking issue entailed interviewing leaders with a range of healthcare organizations to understand their views on the problem, what they were doing to prevent or minimize its emergence, which areas of their operations they anticipated being most affected and which patient populations would be most affected. Additionally, the article identified which types of payment models were most at risk of being adversely affected.

The author felt fortunate to be given the bandwidth to explore a major looming issue while also covering the many daily news developments amid a once-in-a-lifetime healthcare pandemic.

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