Healthcare at the limit: How to cope with the crisis

The healthcare system in Germany and around the world is struggling with the same challenges: an increasing demand for care services, a shortage of manpower and the overload of employees. Added to this are the problems that were already prevalent before the corona pandemic, such as outdated technology, ageing populations, the increase in widespread diseases and increased mental stress, and underfunding.

The pandemic could be just the first of several crises that will shake the sector. Health systems around the world are at risk of being overstretched and leaders are under tremendous pressure to take action against it.

We are convinced that current and future challenges cannot be met with the methods of the past. This requires fundamentally new approaches in the way health systems are run.

In "Healthcare Horizons", KPMG's global healthcare experts highlight the risks associated with maintaining "business as usual" or a purely technological approach. Instead, an integrative and inclusive approach intelligently links the levels of technology, communities and workforce.

The goal is an inclusive and solidarity-based health system that is characterised by the following aspects:

• Use of technology and community resources to empower workers to deliver quality care,
• Effective public-private partnerships, such as harnessing the agility of start-ups to support digital transformation,
• Workforces that can focus on care delivery thanks to technological solutions,
• Empowering patients and their communities to prevent disease and intervene earlier.

To achieve this goal, it is important to understand and leverage the key expected trends and their likely impact on healthcare in these five categories: Technology and Data, Consumer Behaviour, Workforce, Communities, and ESG. On this basis, Healthcare Horizons identifies roles and responsibilities that are critical to achieving an inclusive, inclusive healthcare system.

From this, care pathways are developed that will guarantee inclusive solidarity-based care in the future. In the report, the KPMG experts show which transformations the healthcare system must now tackle in order to ensure chronic and acute care in the coming years.

For sustainable good care in the future, it is essential that the health system completely reorganises itself, with seamless interaction between local, national and global health organisations, with shared data and integrated networks.

A transformation of this magnitude requires close collaboration between all healthcare stakeholders and a longer-term planning horizon that goes beyond the typical one- to four-year business planning cycles. In the report, the experts outline a change agenda for an inclusive and inclusive health system with milestones in the next 1-5 years and 5-10 years.