Challenges Being Faced in Healthcare

The healthcare industry is in the news pretty frequently. This was true long before a global pandemic came around and put unprecedented strain on the medical field. Political debate is constantly ongoing about who is entitled to healthcare and who should pay for it. It became a prominent national issue with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, but it concerned many Americans long before then. Difficulties in the healthcare sector are nothing new.

While the global pandemic forced many changes across the healthcare industry, telehealth might have been the biggest. Also known as virtual visits, these are appointments between service providers and patients who meet online via a video chat function. The technology for this has been available for years, but many healthcare providers avoided it simply out of fear of not being reimbursed by insurance for such costs. Government rules with social health programs often set the standards for what can and can’t be covered by insurance, and telehealth just wasn’t considered billable. Now, it’s almost unavoidable and likely to remain in place for specific disciplines where in-person physical contact is rarely necessary, such as mental health.

Supply chains have also changed due to the pandemic. This happens at both ends of many supply chains. Local outbreaks of the pandemic can mean a spike in demand for anything from ventilators and oxygen to personal protective equipment. On the starting end, a local outbreak might mean a factory or even a shipping container port being shut down for several weeks. Decentralization of supply chains is happening rapidly, as the nation needs more nimble supply chains to keep essential goods flowing to the places that need them. In many cases, the target destinations won’t even be known until goods have been made and put en route.

Decentralization is also happening in many clinical trials. The pandemic has stimulated ample research into new drugs, techniques, and ideas, and localized trials just aren’t as good of an idea as they used to be. Using online technology and virtual trials means that testing and research can be conducted across a broad geographic swath and produce more useful data far more quickly than ever before. The faster this research and development can be done, the faster the world can recover from its greatest crisis since World War II.