What will happen to healthcare in the United States when the election is over, the Supreme Court has heard arguments to declare the ACA unconstitutional, the coronavirus is still infecting Americans, and the political landscape is a little less uncertain? No one knows for sure, but Dr. Kent Bottles certainly has his opinions and provides them by looking into his crystal ball and analyzing perspectives from key opinion leaders in the field. As Kent likes to quote, "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" (Nobel Physics laureate Nils Bohr) and "It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all" (Henri Poincare). In this webinar Kent covers:
1. How the ACA will change in 2021.
2. How the COVID-19 crisis will transform healthcare and society in the future.
3. How the new Congress will legislate in the healthcare arena.
4. How the new political landscape will affect hospitals, doctors, patients, and pharmaceutical companies.
While physicians in some parts of the country are now facing the pandemic head-on, many have started to process what has probably been the most challenging period of their professional careers. Most are still scared, and some are just starting to grieve and feel the emotions of the past months. These emotions can include the struggle with professional identity. Some of us struggled with feeling incompetence; “What did I do? or “How come I couldn’t help more?”. Some of us couldn’t work due to our age or a medical condition that we were forced to disclose.
During this period of disillusionment, we’re trying to figure out how to right the ship with ongoing worries about many things, including the economy, educational needs, and, what the fall and winter are going to look like1. Understanding typical physician characteristics can help guide your teams through the storm.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed serious deficiencies of our healthcare system that has placed many organizations at risk. We now have an opportunity to reformulate and accelerate our clinical and business strategy to prevent such vulnerabilities in the future. This webinar presented by Dr. Jon Burroughs, MD, MBA, FACHE, FACPE, certified healthcare and physician executive, and a leading voice for the healthcare industry in the areas of physician–hospital alignment, performance/patient safety, and strategic planning, covers the systemic issues that were uncovered during the pandemic and how we as an industry can build a more solid strategic foundation that will help us to weather pandemics going forward without sacrificing our greater mission to support the healthcare of those whom we serve.
While many of our pandemic responses have focused appropriately on meeting real-time needs of internal and external stakeholders, COVID-19 has raised foundational questions about our forward ability to create both stability and responsiveness over the long term. Both as a "coronavirus organizational strategy" and as a future imperative, resilience at the organizational level has become requisite. In our upcoming webinar, TLD Group faculty presenter, Dr. Larry McEvoy, emergency physician, founder of Epidemic Leadership, and past health system CEO, takes a look at the virus as both warning and teacher. The webinar will forward a practical framework for resilience as a strategic asset, not merely a personal or professional one. The webinar will review the key mindset, leadership, and design shifts leaders and organizations can make to create organizational capacity for both stability and responsiveness during times of unpredictability and disruption.
Helping Medical Professionals During COVID-19
The level of risk in patient care today is higher than most providers ever considered when choosing medicine as a profession. The war metaphors being used in the Covid-19 fight aptly fit the threat doctors are experiencing. To emotionally bolster staff and lessen residual trauma, medical leaders and front line providers can benefit from applying well refined military crisis leadership strategies.
Routine to remarkable----overnight. That’s what has happened to frontline medical triage with the rapid, unprecedented and unrelenting onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. EMT, ER and ICU staff are well-trained to handle emergency crises of all types, just not of this magnitude, intensity and duration. Medical team leaders face life threatening issues on a regular basis, but not to their own lives at the very same time. Their training and experience prepare them to rapidly assess, execute and adjust medical protocols to fit the needs of a medical crisis, and then usually the crisis ends. Reports from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic have medical professionals describing themselves as “soldiers in the fog of war” physically exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed.
A Letter to Frontline Responders
Holly Hughson is an OD consultant and change strategist, who has spent almost two decades working in high-stakes crisis response, humanitarian action and civil-military coordination. Holly's current work focuses on the human cost incurred by practitioners working on the frontlines of human suffering and vulnerability, and she serves as project advisor for “Ethics Education for Crisis Medicine” at the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London. In a moving tribute she shares her insights and admiration with the frontline responders of COVID-19.
A COVID-19 Test Journey
On Saturday afternoon after a long morning run, a fever came on me with a vengeance, and I had a somewhat sleepless night. Sunday morning a few other symptoms appeared, and I began to wonder if I had become infected with the COVID-19 virus. By mid-day, I used the MGH patient message portal just to let my PCP know my status when she would arrive at work after the weekend.
