While the worldwide pandemic is currently affecting everyone’s daily lives, you have to wonder what permanent changes this life-altering event will have on the healthcare system. The roles of hospitals and primary care doctors will likely be altered in the new normal of “touchless” care.
Public health policy changed drastically in the wake of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which claimed between 50 and 100 million lives. Many countries moved to a more socialistic approach to medicine while the United States embraced a solution which offered health insurance through employers. In 1919 an international bureau for fighting contagious diseases was formed, the precursor to the World Health Organization.
It took years for the U.S. to implement systems like Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, but the suddenness of COVID-19 has forced the government to act with an impetus born of necessity. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid quickly expanded the access to telehealth for its members, and a recent Gallop poll showed virtual visits nearly doubled from March to mid-May. Telemedicine is sure to be one of the tools that will be widely used in the future by the healthcare system.
While many hospitals are struggling to staff emergency rooms which is often the first point of contact for those seriously ill from COVID-19, other healthcare services are struggling to survive. Physicians have seen a vast decrease in patient visits because of widespread fear of getting the illness. Elective procedures have been postponed or canceled because of the same fear. Experts say the “fee-for-service” model of doctors billing for each service performed is out-dated and instead should be focused more on “lump-sum” payments tied to quality of patient care. It would give physicians more incentive to expand services like telehealth and patient education instead of focusing on seeing as many patients as possible which the “fee-for-service” model promotes.
The pandemic has also highlighted the inequality of healthcare in minority populations with these groups reporting higher incidence of hospitalization and death. Future governmental policy will need to address how to better care for the people most at risk. Data collected during the pandemic can be used to focus funding and allocate resources to manage risk in these vulnerable populations.