Rochester Business Journal - December 4, 2020
Finding COVID-19’s Silver Lining: Accelerating to an Improved Future
One gift everyone will welcome this holiday season is finding a silver lining in the abyss of bleak COVID-19 news. Believe it or not, there are a few.
COVID has inspired unprecedented innovation and accelerated advancement across all aspects of life, much of which will become permanent and much of which is positive. For many business executives, this extraordinary challenge has presented latent opportunity for growth and leadership.
Granted, many forced changes and disruptions in business and personal lives are unwelcome and exceedingly difficult. But we will focus on the bright side and elements that will improve life going forward.
The most obvious acceleration has been in the adoption of technology, virtual activity and artificial intelligence, from education to remote work, conferences, entertainment, shopping, socializing …
COVID is pushing many companies “over the technology tipping point,” transforming business forever, observed McKinsey & Company. A recent McKinsey global survey found that companies have accelerated digitization of operations and customer and supply-chain interactions by three to four years and the increase in digital product offerings was hastened by seven years. Respondents expect most changes to stick.
The move to remote working may be “the biggest legacy” of COVID, according to a Nov. 23 Forbes article. Business, skeptical of work-from-home pre-pandemic, are finding that productivity is maintained or improved. Plus workers avoid commute time and hassle, companies can save money on office space, and even air pollution has been reduced.
Supply Chain Revamp
The pandemic has pulled back the curtain on this country’s supply chain weaknesses in general and on extreme, unsustainable flaws in our health care supply system.
We knew going into the pandemic that U.S. reliance on foreign manufacturing for almost all personal protective equipment (PPE) was problematic (understatement). COVID taught us the peril of: an uncoordinated, survival-of-the-fittest scramble for PPE; an uncontrolled, “buyer beware” marketplace flooded with inferior product; a severely depleted Strategic National Stockpile (SNS); and our just-in-time supply methodology - part of mean-and-lean strategies adopted to reduce health care costs.
The federal government is now refurbishing the SNS and reexamining pandemic response. Technological innovation, such as 3D printing, is creating PPE and other supplies from scratch. Public and private sectors are rushing to re-establish domestic manufacturing.
Premier Inc., a consulting company, group purchasing organization (GPO), and Pandion partner, is collaborating with several of its member hospitals/health systems to essentially start making PPE themselves. Premier and members acquired a minority stake in the nation’s largest domestic producer of face masks and other PPE, Prestige Ameritech. They also partnered with manufacturer DeRoyal Industries to domestically manufacture and directly source isolation gowns.
GPOs and distributors also are driving new sourcing approaches and partnerships, improving vendor vetting, moving to multi-source contracts, and injecting resiliency and redundancy into the health care supply chain for the long term.
Dashing to the Future in Health Care
Supply chain aside, nowhere is the pace of change faster and more pronounced than in health care.
Telehealth is commonplace now as federal and state governments removed restrictions during the emergency and permitted payment for teleservices. Seniors, not known to be eager tech-adopters, have embraced telehealth with more than 12.1 million Medicare beneficiaries using it between mid-March and mid-August, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). If CMS permanently removes restrictions on telehealth and health insurer payment remains appropriate, telemedicine will increase access to care in rural and underserved areas, reduce emergency department wait times, and enable efficiencies long sought by consumers.
Thankfully, coronavirus vaccine development has been exponentially accelerated. And while testing logistics are still deficient, the science of COVID testing and screening is sprinting ahead. We can now monitor wastewater in large communal settings to pinpoint the presence of COVID in a small group of people or an individual. Perhaps science can modify those tests to screen for flu and other maladies in the future.
Physicians and clinicians are increasingly ”going digital” to better manage the increased workload and stress brought on by the pandemic while improving patient care. For example, using artificial intelligence (AI) app Suki, physicians simply need their phone to call up patient records and medications. During a patient encounter, they speak normally and the app captures orders and medical notes, entering it all automatically into the electronic medical record (EMR) with no additional work required by the physician or staff, thus saving loads of time.
This type of AI advancement will be a permanent enrichment for physicians, many of whom were suffering from burnout prior to the pandemic.
Spotlight on Changes Needed
The pandemic also illuminated long-standing failings and inequities in the health care system, giving us an opportunity to fix them permanently.
The lifting of telehealth restrictions increased access to behavioral health care that for too long has been ignored, disregarded and inadequately treated to the detriment of millions. And innovative options have made it much easier for patients to seek care. An example is aptihealth, which provides online access to robust, comprehensive treatment programs that incorporate everything from a thorough, initial patient assessment, to matching individuals with therapists, developing personalized plans, and extended care if needed.
More glaring is the disproportionate impact COVID has had on ethnic minorities, revealing ongoing, systemic, and unconscionable ethnic disparity in health and health care. Hopefully, this stark realization will spur more committed and widespread efforts to advance and permanently achieve equity in our health care system.
Finally, the shiniest silver lining we have found during the pandemic is a gift we have had all along. COVID put the spotlight on the selfless, brave, competent, dedicated, caring health care heroes who, for 10 months, have put their lives on the line to care for COVID and all other patients. Their presence and compassion were the only comfort for too many Americans in their last moments of life. We must make sure that our deepened appreciation of and enthusiastic support for health care heroes is COVID’s most enduring legacy.
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