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COVID-19, meet flu season.
Medical practices have overcome more obstacles than ever while handling the public health emergency. Balancing patient needs, personal safety concerns for providers and staff, and bottom-line business needs has been daunting for most.
Now, the situation is poised to become even trickier.
Coming into the fall, medical groups anticipate a resurgence of COVID-19-symptomatic patients. At the same time, they are continuing to accommodate the backlog of pent-up demand from the first shutdown this spring. Providers are motivated to stay open and ensure their patients have access to appropriate and necessary care. And underlying all of this, they have a financial imperative that would hamper a second shutdown.
Systems must be prepared with an operational and financial plan to adapt on a moment’s notice to maintain high quality and safe patient care, and communicate their plans to employees, patients and the public. This will ensure confidence and provide a smooth transition to whatever the operational changes entail.
Below are the four key areas of focus with critical action items to incorporate into your fall and winter operational planning.
Patient Communication and Activation. Patients will want to know about changes to clinic hours, telehealth options, screening protocols during in-person appointments, visitor and waiting room restrictions, new pick-up or drop-off routes, and other adjustments they’ll be expected to make during a visit. From the provider perspective, it will also be nice to inform them of all of the strategies the practice is undertaking to ensure patient safety, from increased cleaning of patient spaces to socially distanced waiting rooms and the requirement of masks.
Patients will often check social media pages and your website for the latest information, and call in if they have questions or concerns. Practices that update their scripts, messaging and external communications channels (and make it clear with a timestamp or date as to when the latest updates were published) can assuage patient concerns before they arise.
Clinic Operations. A surge in COVID-19 cases will likely relegate practices to providing more virtual care, as many did this spring. Practices should use the next few weeks to map out their telehealth strategies as well as their staffing plans, including back-up clinicians who can sub in if practitioners are sick. They should also work with their materials resource management teams to discuss supply availability for ambulatory providers.
Scaling by Specialty and Associated Effects on Capacity. Most healthcare providers scaled back non-emergent or elective procedures this spring to accommodate COVID-19 planning and capacity. Now, to adapt to the anticipated increase in visits between cold and flu season as well as COVID-19, providers’ capacity planning will be critical.
Financial Recovery. In our recent analysis of how COVID-19 is reshaping ambulatory revenue, volumes and operations, our projections showed that some practices were on track to return to their pre-pandemic baseline volumes by the end of the summer, while other groups may see volumes fully return toward to the end of the calendar year. Providers’ financial recoveries are closely tied to how they have been able to scale visits, both in person and virtual.
Virtual visits hit record usage during the first COVID-19 wave, increasing 149X in aggregate between March and May, according to our healthcare database. Premier has successfully advocated for an expansion of telehealth during the pandemic and is now supporting permanent policy changes to modernize the Medicare telehealth benefit, ensuring more patients have access to these services and that providers are adequately reimbursed for them.
Medical group leaders will need to remain vigilant and be nimble this fall and winter.
They will simultaneously be planning to coexist with a potential second wave of COVID-19; manage through the seasonal viruses whose symptoms could be confused with COVID-19; and remain financially viable.
Staying ahead of the curve and creating a plan for a potential resurgence will help medical group leaders minimize disruption to clinic operations.
Our advice: Utilize the first wave successes and failures to inform future decision making. And, seek out opportunities to hear from other health system leaders throughout the country around their experiences and responses to inform your efficacious preparation.
We’re bringing together a panel of medical group leaders Friday, Sept. 25, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss best practice strategies for dealing with a resurgence and managing through daily operations. Join us.
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