Dec 11, 2020
Every day, we hear in the media about the significant shortages of healthcare workers during this startling increase in COVID-19 cases. Currently retired physicians and other retired healthcare front-line workers are being asked to return to the hospitals they previously worked at to provide additional skilled care. This pandemic is exacerbating a growing problem in healthcare - the increasing number of physicians retiring early because of the stress of their profession.In an article on MedPage Today, COVID-19 Is Making The Physician Shortage Worse, Groups Say, Joyce Frieden notes, “The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) publishes an annual report on the physician...
Read MoreFiled Under: benefit advisors, changes in healthcare, Corporate Benefits, covid-19, hospitals, post-COVID, telehealth
Nov 19, 2020
The well-known phrase, "God helps those who help themselves," is commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin but dates back to ancient Greece. In healthcare this idiom should be highlighted by every provider. I was recently in a discussion with a chief medical officer of a major healthcare system. One of his comments as we were concluding the meeting was, "If we can keep our congestive heart patients from opening a bag of potato chips when they get discharged from the hospital we will substantially reduce our readmission rate." Our tendency to revert to prior behaviors is probably the most significant barrier...
Read MoreFiled Under: benefit advisors, changes in healthcare, Corporate Benefits, covid-19, hospitals, post-COVID, telehealth
Oct 2, 2020
nsurance advisors have become the go-to consultant for executives and HR departments throughout the benefits industry when it comes to the type of healthcare coverage they should provide for their employees. Normally, advisors can rely upon historical and actuarial tables for the normal range of healthcare in American society. We can all agree that these are extraordinary times and the usual calculations are unreliable. Trusted advisors are navigating for their clients in a world of unknowns as businesses reopen amid a pandemic that has, to a lesser or greater extent, been faced by more than 7 million Americans to date....
Read MoreFiled Under: benefit advisors, changes in healthcare, Corporate Benefits, covid-19, hospitals, post-COVID, telehealth
Jul 20, 2020
As we continue to experience the tragic loss of life from COVID-19, the question being asked is what will be the new normal in healthcare post-pandemic. How do we plan for this new normal? When will it stabilize and become predictable? Will it stabilize at all? We are in the early stages of a tidal wave that is going to irreversibly reorder the process of care delivery. The new normal is really going to become the regular balance of profound instability. One example seen in the midst of this pandemic is large hospital systems laying off thousands of healthcare workers....
Read MoreFiled Under: changes in healthcare, concierge healthcare, covid-19, healthcare quality, hospitals, telehealth
Apr 27, 2020
As most of us remain homebound facing a virus that is unprecedented in our lifetime, we are beginning to understand that returning to normal will not be returning to the lifestyle we were living before COVID-19. The transformation that we will experience in our lifestyles will impact our healthcare system. Americans have taken for granted that the system would be there to protect us when we needed it. It cost our society nearly 20% of the Gross Domestic Product to maintain the current system and we have naturally assumed it is the best in the world and will have our...
Read MoreFiled Under: changes in healthcare, covid-19, hospitals