Healthcare thought leaders fear lengthy ripple effects from COVID
It’s a healthcare economy that could be in big trouble even after the pandemic subsides.
Already supply is suffering as hospitals continue to cope with COVID above all else. Demand is down due to patients’ reticence to risk nonemergency care.
And this may only be the beginning.
Looking at the gathering “secondary” storm—delayed care that may end up as care never received—Reuters presents anecdotal but compelling reasons for concern in a news-analysis piece posted July 13.
Of course, the unease isn’t just or even mostly economic.
Texas oncologist Debra Patt, MD, tells the news service cancer mortality, for example, is likely to skyrocket in the wake of the pandemic.
Patients who should be getting screened, monitored or treated are “scared to go in the hospital unless they absolutely have to,” Patt says. “And even when the patients are willing, it’s hard to get things done.”
The article also cites CDC data showing emergency-department utilization dropping 42% during the first 10 weeks of the COVID crisis. In that same period, ER care for patients with possible heart attacks fell 23% and for those with likely stroke by 20%.
One hospital CEO with whom Reuters spoke openly worries about these trends continuing or restarting.
“We won’t know for years,” he says, “how many people lost their lives or lost good years of their lives for fear of coronavirus.”
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Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.