Two weeks ago, I wrote about looking ahead to the “new normal” post COVID-19. Since then some states have started slowly re-opening while other states are defining what their phased re-opening approach may look like. Hospitals have started to develop plans to expand their services beyond emergencies and COVID-19 patients – performing elective surgeries and opening outpatient clinics. All of this is new territory. Patient scheduling, workflow changes, and appropriate staffing and PPE to provide safe care must be accounted for and planned for very carefully. This will happen over the coming weeks and months.

Given the financial impact COVID-19 is having on healthcare systems, executives also need to be looking at how to position their organization for not just recovery but long-term success. One of the articles that I have seen on this is a white paper published by the Chartis Group – “After the Surge: Five Health System Imperatives in the Age of COVID-19”. In it they discuss how COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the care delivery landscape. They outline what they consider to be the five imperatives for future health system success:

1. Engage consumers and other referral sources to recapture patients
2. Fundamentally reduce the cost base
3. Restructure the physician enterprise
4. Transform the clinical operating model
5. Closely evaluate partnerships, both horizontal and vertical, traditional and non-traditional

Other management consulting firms that work with healthcare providers most likely have a similar analysis and framework. Regardless what they may look like, all of these long-term efforts will require IT support. Whether it is engaging consumers, making telehealth stick as part of the new care delivery model, supporting new partnerships through data integration, or finding ways to reduce costs.

ThisWeekinHealthIT has been a valuable, go-to resource for health IT teams during this crisis providing resource information and firsthand Field Reports from IT leaders. I have shared many of them directly with CIO colleagues and through social media. I am both amazed and humbled when I hear what IT leaders and their teams have accomplished in such a short time – less than two months. Projects that would normally have taken months took hours. We have seen systems move a large percentage of their workforce home, stand up field hospitals, set up drive through testing, and scale telehealth to support vastly more visits, and provide video visits for families with hospitalized members. Health IT teams everywhere performed at their highest level when their communities needed them the most.

But how much is here to stay? What is likely to be the new normal? While IT teams are still supporting their organizations in testing and caring for COVID-19 patients, they like everyone else in healthcare must think about what comes next. On Tuesday, April 28 at 12PM ET, I will be joining my StarBridge Advisors colleague, David Muntz, along with Drex DeFord and ThisWeekinHealthIT host, Bill Russell, to discuss what is next for health IT and to field your questions. Please join us for this live session – you can find out more here. (If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.)

Be well. Be strong. Be smart.

Related Posts:

Looking ahead – the “new normal” post COVID-19

COVID-19: Health IT collaboration and best practices