This is most likely a transformational time for the entire world, certainly for our nation, and definitely for health care. You may or may not be reassured by authors Strauss and Howe, who believe that history shows that as a nation, we are exactly where we need to be (as we have been at this point in each of the preceding three centuries). Either way, there is no arguing that the pace of change right now is absolutely frenetic. More than a few saying tiring, too; it's not just you. 

In between panic attacks, it's also extremely exciting. There are so many social, technological, economic and other forces coming together in some kind of painfully transparent hot fusion in an increasing small world. At HCI, see our job as pulling disparate pieces into some kind of focus, and sorting out which will impact women's and children's services first, and which will come later. To that end, we talk constantly with bright people from many different disciplines, although we'll admit many are dominated by women. Economics, health strategy gurus, marketing (outside of health care), sociology, education, philanthropy, organizational development and change, veteran's administration, definitely IT...you name it, we are constantly gathering information. 

Reflecting many larger trends, in women's and children's this is the year of less is better (spending and interventions), West meets East (functional medicine), telehealth apps (and payment!), and a much stronger focus on inexpensive, highly effective digital/social media. Gender medicine gives birth to precision medicine almost before anyone heard of it...to which boomer women immediately say, "I knew there were better answers!"

Perhaps most importantly, it's becoming even more clear that women are the critical connectors in a population health environment If you made the jump from an OB-Gyn condition-based service line to a real women's health service line--what mag describes as "age 13 to 113"--you're exactly where you need to be for population health initiatives. Here are just a few of the initiatives on which we are very actively working, with all new materials, information and research.

HCI Trend Watch

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We continue to see increasing initiatives to decrease interventions in birth, with Gen Y (mag's 'Whole Foods generation') asking how they can use their own resources best for birth. Nurse-miidwives and doulas and even Nitrous Oxide are getting reintegrated into birth as innovators look for ways to decrease the iatrogenic impact of interventions. It's a new post 39-week initiative of "natural childbirth" that is not a definite "no" to epidurals...but it does mean childbirth is coming home to less intervention.
  • Men's health care.  Women's services are leading in the push for men's health websites, led by the men's health sites from womenshealth.gov. Gen Y men are searching the Internet for health care information, more so than the male generations before them...and women's services are showing health organizations how to find these men to prevent and mitigate disease as we switch from treatment to population health.
  • Women brought integrative and functional medicineto to the US (if you don't think WAY back—like before 1491—at least think Lamaze in the 1960s). Now women are leading the way in blending and using the best of both Eastern and Western medicine. A great example is Polly Perez, one of the great pioneers in natural birth in the U.S., whose 2001 book on recovery from stroke started a whole new way of looking at "brain attack" recovery. 
  • We continue to expand definitions, demographics and--most of all--psychographics of female consumers, particularly as boomers rewrite the "over 65" psychographic, which is about as descriptive as thinking everyone "under 45" is the same. While there are six generations alive today in the U.S., boomers represent one out of three people alive. The opportunity is huge, and we know boomers. Count on us to continue to map this psychographic as it rewrites the book on 'senior hood,' diseases and conditions of aging, and on death and dying--as they rewrote the book in the 60s and 70s, on sexuality and birth. Exciting times ahead!
  • You're going to start seeing a lot now about the role of women as IDS entity connectors throughout life: She is how you get her extended family back when necessity means they stray outside your IDS. It is impossible for any IDS to own every element in a system of CARE (as described by Sg2). Engage the woman, have the leverage to return the family back to your IDS when they stray for an element of care you don't offer. 
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And, of course, mag just managed to research and publish a 350+ page book about marketing to women, and marketing a women's service line in both a FFS and population health/ACO environment. Here's a tip: Don't miss the secret information (see the bottom of the Table of Contents for the link for everything the editor left out!), and we continue to follow the transition of the balance between traditional media and digital and social media very carefully. In 2013, we began to see how the balance might play out, and in 2014 it really became clear how it works.

Generations of women alive today
(plus 1)

Our 2015,  internal research focus

  • Value is a huge focus, with the arrival of the first Federal non-Medicare VBP, Early Elective Delivery. Penalties apply to all Medicare patient dollars starting October 2016 (with CY15 as the Performance year). HCI's initial data indicate that fewer than a quarter of hospitals, providers and health systems are ready. There are so many costs we can get out of obstetrics alone, while dramatically increasing our quality. 
  • Precision care. We're working with providers who are knowledgeable, and interested, in making the switch as quickly as possible from cookbook guidelines to truly precision care for individuals,  ensuring a more appropriate care experience well outside of gender and ethnicity alone. Long live gernetics!

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  • Significant, if sometimes hilarious, differences in gender neurobiology and how it plays out in reception (or not) of marketing and critical communications-.HCI's slide decks these differences are described as "unbelievable," "I knew that!" and "hilarious!" by both men and women, and may save your marriage! For hints, see mag's newest book.
  • With our referral partners, we continue to explore upcoming issues from brand strategy for women's and children's services in a population health environment (versus FFS), to new ways of engaging and mapping the referring physician and female philanthropy experiences. ACO and population health is where population-based services lines like women's and children's should really excel--as long as you have made the leap from an OB-Gyn service line to true women's. Also think through a very different role of non-children's hospitals in children's (versus "pediatric") care in the coming decades...big changes!
  • Last, but huge: Continual patient experience mapping and persona development are critically important for family engagement and retention. As each psychographic matures through life stages, they simply rewrite the rules for those encounters. 
From the newest information about Gen Z 'digital native' girls, 15 years old this year--who already use the Internet more and differently than Gen Z boys or any generation before them--to the nearly one in five women in the U.S. who now choose to never to have children to boomers and seniors who refuse to buy cases of Depends while sitting back and knitting on the way to nursing homes—children's and women's services are changing dramatically every day.

By the way, remember those are the same boomers and seniors everyone wants in their MSSP. These 'grannies' are not acting like the frail grannies of yesterday, and designing outreach tactics for yesterday won't work for them. Your contemporary women's population health service line is key to reaching and engaging them, for the success of your IDS.

mag is the nation's foremost health care authority on communicating with, and messaging to, women about health care. She has taken women's psychographics in health care to an art form. Read more in her first and second books, and see the faces of today's six generations of women alive in the U.S. today (plus one), at left.