Question

how have cov-19 change the healthcare system

Answer 1

In any economic disaster, the largest, best-financed organizations have a natural advantage over smaller, cash-strapped organizations. The bigger entities have a greater ability to withstand economic downturns, while the small ones can quickly go out of business because they lack the financial reserves needed to tide them over.

In the roughly 2 ½ months since the COVID-19 pandemic began sinking its hooks into America, the pertinence of this business axiom has been amply illustrated. Small companies across the country are desperate to reopen so they can survive, while many large corporations are seeing their stock prices soar. Most healthcare systems are not for profit, so they don’t issue stock; yet bigger hospitals are not suffering as much financially as smaller and rural hospitals are. Even though the large hospitals’ losses from elective surgery bans have been higher, they have much deeper reserves and greater access to bank lines of credit.

Physician practices have been hit disproportionately by the pandemic. Most practices have switched to telemedicine visits as patients have shunned in-person encounters and the offices have tried to protect their staffs. But the revenue from virtual encounters has not come close to making up for the loss of revenues from office visits that, in many cases, include lab tests and/or minor procedures

At this point, we can only speculate on the long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 crisis on healthcare. Numerous observers have pointed out that, whatever happens, healthcare will be changed forever. For example, telehealth will become a much more important part of healthcare delivery than it has been up now, and more care now delivered in hospitals will be provided at home.

There is also speculation about whether or not the consolidation of the healthcare industry will markedly increase in the aftermath of the pandemic. Anecdotally, small primary care practices are increasingly asking health systems to acquire them, Josh Halvorson, a principal with ECG Management Consultants, told me.

“It’s a stress test on those smaller practices. However, there are large single specialty groups that have a strong market presence, and they’re weathering it pretty well,” he said in April.

The respect that patients have for the health care systems around the globe, and the understanding of what it means to have a health care system truly under pressure, will allow health systems to build on that goodwill to improve their services in ways that pre-COVID would not have been possible, at least not in a rapid timescale or the extent that will be possible now.

As we move into a post-COVID world, there will be significantly different interactions between patients and clinical teams, such as patient entering their personal data directly rather than relying on clinical staff to be transcriptionists; initial remote screening of patients to identify the best clinical team and route of access rather than relying on the default appointment; different approaches to delivering that consultation via telemedicine, telephone care, computer suggested screening prior to consultation; and direct referral and management by care teams without the need for the doctor’s intervention.

For those health care providers with technology in place and true delivery partners that can be responsive, there will be even more drive to get their technology to the latest standards to allow rapid sharing of innovation and data, as has been seen in the pandemic of those who were either not on a technological base or were on older technology having a disadvantage when it came to taking advances developed in a timely fashion.

If COVID-19 has taught the world one thing, it’s that humans are fragile and no health system can be maintained to have the idle capacity to step up to delivering care in a situation such as COVID-19. Instead, it relies on the whole population to do its duty to support the health systems, to help themselves where possible and to utilise health care appropriately. Health care has changed forever. It cannot be taken for granted, it will change and it will change for the better.