As India slowly started unravelling the
lockdown in many states, the healthcare industry, along with the other
industries, is gearing up to provide the much-needed healthcare services like
the days prior to the pandemic.
However, restoration of other services when the fight with the Covid-19 pandemic is still on is a mammoth task. A well devised post-lockdown organizational strategies for hospitals are the need of the hour.
Post-Lockdown Strategies for Hospitals
The speed and stealth of the virus made it impossible for the governments and public health service divisions to keep the pandemic at bay. Analyzing the current scenario, and the other health demands of the public, checking the depth before the dip would be a wise thing for a hospital to do.
Here is a strategy playbook for healthcare facilities to follow to make a smooth transition into post-lockdown healthcare operations.
Optimize Out-patient Delivery Mechanism
Hospitals are experiencing a bottleneck in their intensive and emergency healthcare departments due the spike in Covid-19 cases. Optimizing the out-patient delivery model for all non-critical conditions would be the option to choose.
● Prioritize healthcare services that, if differed, may result in readmission or cause potential patient harm.
● Take measures for
rapid expansion of healthcare delivery models such as out-patient and leverage
telemedicine for all the non-prioritized health conditions.
● Maintain a
threshold of care system that segregates care into 4 segments in the event of a
deferral - immediate potential patient harm, potential patient harm in near
future, less unlikely to cause harm, and highly unlikely to cause harm.
● Appropriate
admissions and re-evaluating the need for admission gives your hospital
capacity to optimize your delivery.
Telemedicine - The Go-to way for General Medicine
Telemedicine has always been a nice-to-have healthcare delivery system and now it has become imperative for hospitals. Here are a few reasons why you should include telemedicine in your post-lockdown strategy.
● Optimizing the healthcare services by bringing them to the doors of the needy, telemedicine is the future of healthcare delivery systems.
● Starting from the primary healthcare providers to the specialists, healthcare players can leverage telemedicine to provide health solutions.
● It is the potential alternative for the providers to monitor, follow-up, and offer the further course of action for almost all types of medical needs.
● Apart from the mainstream healthcare services, behavioural counselling, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and advanced care planning can be done seamlessly using telemedicine.
Strategies to Maintain a Balanced Transition
As the hospitals are functioning at their full capacity dedicated to Covid-19 but making the transition to a balancing point where the other essential health services are rendered is exigent.
● Epidemiological handling strategies are still questionable and rudimentary in many hospitals.
● Making the infrastructural and resources split and allocating dedicated health service centers is the key in successful handling.
● With the disrupted supply chain systems, it is time for the hospitals to come to the common grounds, share data, and employ strategies such as location pooling.
● Location pooling a method in which a particular condition is treated at a particular facility for that particular community.
Hospital Capacity Management
Considering
the cross-infections and Covid-19 transmission it is highly unlikely for the
hospitals to function at full capacity. However hospitals can enhance their
current capacity by following these measures.
● Keep your workforce well-informed about the ongoing response needs of each health need of the patients.
● Make adjustments to healthcare delivery in such a way that the in-person care is reduced.
● Keep the infection prevention guidelines in practice and tailor them to comply with the current scenario.
● Take measures to identify higher acuity health care needs (non-Covid-19), screen and refer them appropriately.
Critical care management and emergency care management are the two departments that need a regulated perspective.
Successful handling of any pandemic needs realization of all possible options and solutions. Employing telemedicine, out-patient service delivery systems, re-purposing the service capacity for non-urgency services and establishing a coordinated hospital ecosystem are the silver linings in mitigating the risks the human race is facing currently.
Explore your healthcare facility’s critical care and emergency care capacities, non-Covid-19 healthcare service delivery, and ways to sustain and maintain the fiscal viability with the help of experienced and best healthcare consulting firms in India to change the tide.
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