Building healthcare resiliency during the Covid-19 pandemic
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the healthcare system and related organisations must build resiliency to withstand the shocks that may come their way, and be in a position to pursue the opportunities that rapid and significant change can create.
Every hospital or health system will face a multitude of risks; hence, a healthcare organisation would primarily need to identify and assess credible potential scenarios on its horizon and model the impact these scenarios could have on its current strategic and financial plan if they become reality. Thereafter, it needs to determine alternative pathways that the organisation could follow to maintain or advance its strategic and financial position.
The macro-market scenarios of the pandemic that are foreseeable should be the focus of this planning effort, as these would have a material operational or financial impact—either positive or negative—on the organisation, and many of these would be beyond the organisation's direct control. Modelling the potential timing and impacts of a macro-market scenario would help organisational leaders understand the magnitude of risk, the resources that will be needed to hedge any downside impacts, and the amount of time the organisation will have to adjust to the impacts.
Once key scenarios are identified and their potential impact is defined, leadership should be able to find the trigger points that indicate change is coming and a response is required. Leadership should also identify and, if necessary, pursue alternative paths forward that will help the organisation maximise upside opportunities or minimise downside risk.
Among the macro-market scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, the infection rate, the number of daily identified cases, the progress of the vaccination drive and the availability of vaccines indicate the necessity of imposing lockdowns in the near future, which in turn leads to an assumption of probable lessened patient footfall for cold non-Covid cases. Again, the same scenarios indicate the spike in Covid-19 cases, thereby putting organisations on their toes for Covid-19 preparedness in terms of resource availability (e.g. bed, manpower, oxygen, high flow nasal cannula, disinfectant, PPE and other safety gear, etc).
The Covid-19 pandemic will likely have lasting impacts on healthcare. The consumer-driven changes in the pandemic also need to be taken up on our journey to sustainability. Having experienced the convenience of tele-health, for example, we have seen consumers become much more accustomed to digital health visits because of Covid-19 restrictions on in-person visits, making patients less inclined to travel to a doctor's chamber in a hospital for routine care needs. New investments that enhance a health system's digital health platform (tele-health and tele-rehab) could help build customer loyalty to the system, while preparing for new competition from tech companies entering the healthcare market.
Gearing resources from hospitals to customers (home/office/neighbourhood) should be a major way to expand the healthcare horizon. Creating efficient and trained tech-savvy manpower—mostly in the form of nurses, patient care attendants, lab technologists and even enabling volunteers by training them for basic health check-ups and monitoring—could be the key to achieve a sustainable healthcare service delivery model to cater to the increasing load of Covid-19 patients of different severity. Starting from home sample collection to home health monitoring to home medicine delivery, all will encompass an efficient home care service model pertinent for such times. Establishing e-clinics at local chemist shops, educational institution campuses, priority banking lounges or shopping malls to impart tele-health could contribute towards setting up the new-normal culture in healthcare.
Along with vaccination initiatives taken by the government, mass scale availability of cheaper Covid-19 testing facilities with simpler sample collection methods and faster turnaround time can promise a return to a more stable operating environment in the country. The financial stresses that healthcare organisations, and the economy as a whole, have experienced during the pandemic is expected to heighten the trend towards pursuing new value-based models that bring greater affordability of care.
Dr Shagufa Anwar is a health communication specialist and brand marketer, with more than two decades of experience as a C-suite Executive in country's leading pharmaceutical companies and private hospitals.
Email: dr.shagufa.anwar@gmail.com.