Three Things I Hope Health Care Won ’t Recover From

By RANDY CARPENTER The loss of lives and livelihoods from COVID-19 are almost too much to comprehend. And yet, slowly, conversations are emerging about the positives percolating from the pandemic. It’s human nature to want to look for the positives in even the worst of situations, and I’ve noticed that in both my personal and my professional circles of late, people are talking about the things they hope we don’t lose when things go back to “normal.”  Chief among them, especially in my healthcare technology circles, is a level of humanity that our previously faster-paced lives, ways and organizations had perhaps too often and too easily dismissed. The humans on the frontline of care delivery, for example. The effects of social isolation on healthy people, much less those who are sick. The struggle and juggle of modern work-life balance. Inequalities in healthcare access and delivery. We’ve long talked about technology’s ability to make some of these things easier, to close some of these gaps, but now we know just how possible they are when people, politics and policy unite in the face of a pandemic. We now know just how quickly even the largest and slowest-moving of health systems can change course and even course correct. Until now, it’s been far easier to talk about the promise of technology, telemedicine and remote workforce scenarios than it was to actually deploy them. Because before, to deploy such solutions also meant loss; loss of co...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Health Tech Source Type: blogs