COVID-19 situation has shown how important it is nowadays to provide services online. We could compare it to a situation when meeting in front of the building “after a fire alarm rung”; Who came out and who DID NOT?
Being proactive vs. reactive means being ready to take advantage vs. paying your debt in the moments of change
In the past decades, we saw the majority of the industries have digitally transformed their businesses. Based on these achievements, the players that are providing a “basic set” of services (corresponding to Physiological and Safety layers in Maslow Hierarchy of Needs) such as insurers, banks, food and beverage suppliers, etc., have been welcoming their respected customers in these days to access and manage their offering online. Healthcare services, even though being the most impactful and exposed in this crisis situation, were in the vast majority of cases not able to respond so. On the other side, we have been witnessing (in person or over the media) the struggle going on:
- Persons being ill waiting in lines for hours to do get their tests done;
- Physicians that in personal insolation were not able to provide services even though being healthy;
- Care team members being exposed to infections and so being among the main transmitters of the disease where this could easily be avoided;
- Vulnerable populations (patients affected by cancer, chronic diseases, etc.) were more exposed to COVID-19 than necessary or not receiving the care support that their health status required.
Hectic times made the healthcare delivery processes became even more prone to mistakes due to lack of multidisciplinary work and information unavailability while lacking the integrated care systems.
Long story short, the industries who invested in digitalisation in the years before, were able to take advantage of COVID-19 shock and will continue to do so long after the shock will be behind us. Why? By implementing customer centricity not only they were able to provide better service, but they were able as well to protect their employees and finally the whole nations by slowing down the infection process. Their contribution will pay back in a form of shift, which will impact many businesses from traditional industries to turn from offline to online in a larger extent than ever before. Healthcare, the industry that is from the perspective of people’s wellbeing and country GDP by far the most impactful one, “got stuck in the building”.
COVID-19’s impact on the collapse of healthcare systems: who is to blame?
Imagine that politicians instead of reporting bad news each and every day, they would rather be promoting their countries like the ones providing health services online which resulted in a far lower spread of COVID-19 between population and workers and so protecting their healthcare systems not to crash. Imagine them reporting that they don’t have issues with availability of safety equipment that other countries are overpaying for and that the money they saved would be used for further digitalisation of the healthcare system which would contribute to long-lasting economy recovery that all countries will desperately strive for.
Instead, the CIOs, CCIOs and their respected team members who were striving to accomplish the transformation process for decades, were once again left alone. Drawn in the operative work that they would like to get done years ago, they were publicly asking “please don’t write or call us” with the intention to propose solutions in these dramatic moments, since it is too late for the system to adopt the changes that were needed to be implemented before the time of crisis.
The passionate IT and Clinical personnel shouldn’t be left alone in this mess, other stakeholders such as insurers or payers who were for far too long hesitating to bring digitally transformed healthcare services on their pricelists should also take a stake in it. The conservatism and so hesitation that is keeping them in a reactive mode has once again brought them in a situation where they were not able to take advantage of the world that is turning. Instead, they will have to swallow and digest enormous bills that COVID-19 will bring on their plates.
A big hole in the system as a consequence of not taking action
Last but not least, there is also the aspect of the healthcare system. Healthcare service providers were in a deprivileged mode for years and we all were asking ourselves; what will happen in a decade and more when the ageing population will depend on continuous care that the system in a current set-up won’t be able to provide. They will pay the biggest stake in this crisis. 20 % and more of the clinical teams that are unconditionally dedicating their lives to provisioning care were affected by the virus, and many of those won’t recover from it. This will not only result in a lot of crashed families, but also in a big hole that will emerge in the system which is already not been able to cope with the load of work the modern society requires.
Connected and Personalised care, a direction towards a more sustainable healthcare
In order to pursue our company mission that sees the greatest number of people enabled to access to optimal health care and so to improved overall well-being, Parsek launched a quick start out of cloud offering that allows healthcare providers to cope with the COVID-19 situation and after to adapt the necessary use cases to follow their strategic needs on the digitalisation journey. We are proudly contributing our expertise by providing fast rollouts to those providers that saw the actual opportunity in the crisis to speed up and digitalise those pathways, workflows and use cases that were lagging behind for years.
By doing that, our good intentions and great job done have been seen and recognised by a world’s leading healthcare research organization, KLAS Research who included us in their COVID-19 Technology & Services Solutions Guide.
How “the new normal” will look like after the first shock is over?
For sure, a greater number of population and so decision-makers and influencers will understand that healthcare services have to become provisioned online. Especially that will become the reality for patient cohorts that are in continuous need of Outpatient care management. Saying that, clinicians and care teams will get a stronger mandate in transforming the way on how they collaborate and so deliver patient-centric health services. Only the vendors with a proven track record of providing clinical and organisational benefits while improving working conditions and access to healthcare services will truly be eligible to contribute and so to prosper on the way of accomplishing their mission.
Janez Bensa,
CEO @Parsek