Changes in the healthcare environment necessarily require innovation on behalf of providers. Due to COVID-19, 2020 has been a transformative year for healthcare. Hospitals and health systems have risen to the challenge of a pandemic by packing years' worth of innovation and technology adoption into a matter of months.
Innovation in the evolving healthcare landscape was the focus of conversation during a session at the Becker's HIT + Revenue Cycle Virtual Event on Oct. 7. Panelists were:
- Katherine Lusk, chief health information management and exchange officer, Children's Health System - Dallas
- Claude J. Pirtle, MD, chief medical information officer and medical director of corporate health and wellness, Jackson-based West Tennessee Healthcare
- Jeffrey S. Sturman, senior vice president and CIO, Hollywood, Fla., Memorial Healthcare System
Here is an excerpt from the conversation, edited for length clarity and clarity. To view the session on demand, click here.
Question: 2020 has been a transformative year for healthcare. How has the way you think about innovation changed this year?
Jeffery S. Sturman: Innovation has taken a front-and-center seat during the pandemic. In years past, I think at least for a hospital system like Memorial, we thought about innovation in a very hospital-centric way, basically thinking about what we can do for patients inside our walls and not really focusing on what we can do for outside the hospital. That's changed. We were heading in this direction before the pandemic with population health and value-based care, but we have seen a really significant uptick in trying to figure out innovative ways to take care of our patients from home.
Katherine Lusk: Innovation has always been a cornerstone of what we do at Children's Health, but this year has been invigorating from an innovation standpoint. We had telehealth services in our elementary schools for some time, and it was steadily growing, but we saw a threefold increase early on in the pandemic. Within the first three weeks of the pandemic, we had delivered more virtual health visits than we had in the previous three years. It's been very exciting to see both patients and our provider community embrace telehealth. While this has been a horrible time, it allowed all of us to stretch ourselves and to look for practical ways to leverage technology that would support our clinical mission.
Dr. Claude J. Pirtle: The pandemic really forced us to rethink the process of providing care to our patients. It is a terrible time, and it has pushed us to try to use technologies to protect not only the patient, but also physicians and staff from COVID-19. Innovative technologies such as remote monitoring for COVID-19 patients as well as telehealth in both the inpatient and remote settings have become very important. I think you're going to see healthcare continue on this path and really create a better dynamic for patient care in the future.