The Great Plague in 14th century Europe gave birth to the Renaissance, which ushered in a new age of advances in surgery, anatomy, physiology and medical research. Now, it’s up to healthcare leaders and clinicians to ensure the Covid-19 pandemic brings about a similar enlightenment. The obvious place to start is the outdated, patient-unfriendly healthcare delivery system that has marginalized people of color and underserved communities.
Challenging healthcare orthodoxies
To follow in the footsteps of the European Renaissance, healthcare leaders and clinicians need to drive the creation of a revitalized delivery model that works for all patients, not just those with greater means. This would be an enormous step toward correcting the blatant health disparities that made the pandemic disproportionately devastating for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people.
The Covid-19 pandemic could challenge entrenched norms that perpetuate health disparities, including:
- Our facility-centric model that demands patients travel to providers for care.
- The belief that an inpatient level of care can only be delivered in a hospital.
- Failure of our industry to address social determinants of health.
Challenging these healthcare “orthodoxies” may feel like an uphill battle. However, we have a moral imperative to right inequity at every opportunity. And we must start by creating a strong culture of ownership that accepts nothing less than what’s best for every patient, every time.
What will it take for the healthcare system to embrace this opportunity and drive the next renaissance forward? It will take leaders like us. Here are three steps that will move us toward a revitalized delivery system.
1. Create a culture of ownership
To end health inequity, we must accept that we are responsible to all patients—especially the most vulnerable. The best way to promote this form of ownership is to focus on the shared values that drew us all to healthcare.
Physicians, advanced providers, nurses and administrators can unite around our common desire to help patients. As leaders, we can model this shift by putting patients at the center of our decision-making and setting similar expectations at all levels of the organization, with the goal being to empower our care teams to be the best they can be. I refer to this ownership mindset as a culture of brilliance, in which we each have a responsibility as providers to inspire and challenge each other.
Could this patient-first approach be dangerous in today’s tough fiscal landscape? Our experience across more than 450 practice locations suggests the opposite. We’ve found that doing what’s best for patients also benefits hospitals and clinicians. For example, connecting with patients has helped to combat clinician burnout during the pandemic. We found that emergency physicians who perform telehealth follow-ups even call this task “the feel-good shift.” It is clear that spending time with grateful patients, who would otherwise have limited care access, uplifts physicians and adds meaning to their work.
2. Engage clinicians in strategic planning
When it comes to redesigning care delivery, we leaders can’t afford to ignore the expert perspectives of our clinicians. Physicians, advanced providers and nurses see firsthand the barriers patients face in accessing care. We would therefore be wise to identify and enlist clinician champions in both our strategic planning and targeted change initiatives.
For example, if clinical leadership was concerned about the long wait times experienced by behavioral health patients in emergency departments, they could hold clinician roundtables to better understand the issue and address solutions. These kinds of meetings can often lead to instilling new programs within hospital systems to provide clinicians with the tools they need to correct areas of concern and deliver better care.
3. Invest in frontline innovation
Because providers see access challenges up close, they often have simple but powerful ideas about how to overcome these barriers. The most cost-effective way to redesign healthcare is therefore to empower clinician innovation. Healthcare organizations often achieve a high ROI when investing time and resources in promising provider-led projects.
By leveraging passionate frontline providers, who already partner with leading companies across sectors, we can greatly help develop future-forward care innovations that meet the needs of today’s patients and anticipate tomorrow’s expectations.
In our experience, frontline solutions have ranged from setting up systems to help with greater post-care treatment adherence to ideas that improve clinical results while increasing patient confidence and satisfaction. Physicians are eager to share solutions—you just have to give them the opportunity.
A renaissance demands courage
Speaking out against established orthodoxies is never easy or comfortable. While we’re unlikely to spend our dying days in prison like Galileo, we can expect resistance from both within our organizations and from the wider healthcare industry. However, if brave scientists, artists, scholars and philosophers hadn’t raised their voices in opposition to the status quo, the Renaissance might never have come to pass.
Covid-19 has opened a similar window of opportunity. For the benefit of our most vulnerable patients, let’s not miss this once-in-a-century opportunity to effect sweeping change and usher in an age of enlightenment.
Photo: FG Trade, Getty Images