The HIMSS organization recently published a well-crafted response letter to Senator Lamar Alexander and the U.S.Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions’ white paper, “Preparing for the Next Pandemic”. If you have not come to the conclusion that there will be a “next pandemic”, I’ll let you go sit with that for a little while. Please come back when that reality sinks in.
Back? Good. Now let’s get to work.
As IT leaders, regardless of the industry, we need to prepare our organizations. I believe this is a two prong attack, especially in healthcare. The first prong is that we need to consider the potential impact on new regulations or guidelines white papers and industry responses may have. The second prong is that we need to explore with our business leaders the ongoing opportunities which have emerged from this situation and how we can convert them to permanent revenue streams. Let’s focus only on the potential regulation changes in this article.
In the HIMSS response letter, the point is made that we need to make telehealth permanent. It states “... it is far easier to scale up existing mechanisms during a crisis than it is to implement new ones. During future pandemics, we support efforts to encourage or otherwise incent industry and market suppliers to provide flexible licensing policies to allow for the necessary scaling and contraction of systems to support healthcare delivery during a pandemic.” As a technology leader, I couldn't agree more. As you read this as a technology leader though, what regulation might be in the making here? My thought? Move to a major, HIPAA compliant system now if you are not already on one. Telemedicine is here to stay. Get your project plan in place and make it happen before the government roles back all the COVID-19 exceptions. For non-healthcare entities, ensure your systems are encrypted and follow the regulations of your industry. This is just one example of many options.
Some potential coming regulations and guidelines coming out of COVID-19 for healthcare are some ideas which have been around for a while but have not been funded. Perhaps funding will help move the nation forward. These include:
Clean, complete data - The nation is determining how best to share population health data to help with early detection. During this time, who is regularly watching your data and confirming it is complete to ensure when you provide your data nationally, it will actually help detect and solve the next problem?
HIE - data sharing - We all know patients have bad memories. We have the technical ability to join health information exchanges (HIEs), share data between hospitals, and pull basic records such as lab results from other locations. Launch projects, get these connections in place and get your clinicians using them before the government requires us to do so.
Contact information confirmation - Contact and follow up information is a serious problem during COVID-19. Clinicians and state officials are unable to reach people because of bad telephone numbers, addresses, email, etc. We need a better way to ensure the patient and emergency contact information is up to date. Many locations are still using pen and paper and I know my handwriting is a challenge to read. Let’s use technology to gather and update this information.
Telehealth - Make it professional; make it high availability; make it a permanent part of your service offering. Get clinicians headsets and cameras at the right height and angles. Ensure people have UPSs at home for reliability. Clean up backgrounds. Maybe even send people a plaque with your logo or image to hang behind them. Work with your communications and business group to make this part of the ongoing business. Before the government states exactly how much financially they will reimburse or which services, develop business plans and the technology systems to support them.
COVID-19 will forever change the regulations and guidelines for all businesses, especially healthcare. As you read the thought leaders in your industry, what required change do you see coming your way and how are you preparing for it?
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