COVID’s Call to Action: Reset for Success in 2021
Despite its challenges, the pandemic has uncovered meaningful opportunities for healthcare organizations to strengthen their roots, reset expectations, and establish pathways to prevail.
During a March 10 webinar, SCP Health’s Lisa Fry, chief growth officer, and Joseph Rose, MD, senior vice president, group medical officer, explored lessons learned from four major phases of the pandemic to date and how each “chapter” has fundamentally changed the future for hospitals, clinical teams and patients. The webinar can be viewed at ModernHealthcare.com/COVIDCTAWebinar.
1 The “shock and awe” of the beginning of the pandemic required leaders and clinicians alike to make rapid decisions.
As volumes plummeted and elective surgeries were canceled, healthcare leaders pivoted their workforces and scrambled for resources to respond to unforeseen needs. Clinicians from all disciplines pitched in to fight COVID-19, some even working in field hospitals like Dr. Rose. For nearly all clinicians, COVID forced a rapid paradigm shift in telehealth adoption. Emergency and hospital medicine volumes recorded by SCP Health have since both recovered from a significant “shock and awe” dip early in the pandemic, but ED cases are still down year-over-year, and hospitalist encounters are still up year-over-year due to COVID.
2 Last summer, health systems were focused on restoring volume by regaining patient trust, which continues to be a priority.
Health systems throughout the nation have invested in education and outreach to assure patients it is safe to seek care. At the same time, leaders have sought to raise public awareness about the dangers of delaying emergent treatment for serious conditions. As elective surgeries resumed last summer, leaders devised systems to do so safely, prioritizing the most urgent needs. For problems that didn’t require an in-person visit, health systems doubled down on telehealth capabilities, aided by CMS regulatory waivers and widespread clinician adoption.
3 In the fall of 2020, the virus resurged, this time in a more prolonged and widespread outbreak across the U.S.
A second, significant spike occurred in the fourth quarter of 2020 and well into January of 2021, forcing health systems to balance priorities. Leaders dealt with a surge in COVID patients infected over the holidays, while continuing to safely perform elective surgeries. This challenge also prompted healthcare organizations to focus on providing support for their communities, engaging staff as workforce needs increased dramatically and signs of severe burnout from the crisis began to show.
4 Today, leaders can strengthen their foundation and position themselves favorably in the post-pandemic era.
Looking forward, leaders should consider what service lines and technology will be most important in the years ahead, whether it be services that were strong in 2019 or new opportunities. Executives should ask themselves how they can best support their community’s needs and consider how that may be different than in the past. Investing in the vaccine rollout today and establishing your organization as a “go-to” resource for health information could pay dividends in patient loyalty and trust in the long term.
5 As we emerge from the pandemic, make sure to reflect on what has been accomplished as you paint a vision for the future.
While we’re not yet out of the woods, leaders should think intentionally about how they can celebrate the unprecedented accomplishments of their staff during the COVID-19 pandemic while honoring the lives of providers who have perished. It’s important to take the time to appreciate those who went above and beyond by tirelessly maintaining protocols or comforting patients whose loved ones couldn’t be with them. Use this moment to motivate your staff and empower them to be a part of your organization’s vision for the future.