How Academic Health Systems Can Move Forward Once COVID-19 Wanes
Steven D. Shapiro, Paul B. Rothman
Abstract
Over the past few months, as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread across the world, academic medical centers have provided indispensable service in caring for patients and advancing science, including launching hundreds of clinical trials and other studies focused on treatments and vaccines.To fully focus on COVID-19, many academic health systems (AHSs), as well as clinicians in other health care settings, have radically transformed their operations.AHSs have created additional critical care and acute care capacity, and redeployed physicians, nurses, and trainees to support the needs of patients.The changes have not been limited to the hospitals.Both clinical and nonclinical staff are working from home; AHSs and other groups have deferred a significant amount of nonurgent care; many, if not most, clinicians have begun using telemedicine widely for nonurgent care; and education has become largely virtual.Under normal circumstances these changes might occur over months, years, or even decades.Instead, they have happened in weeks.As the pandemic begins to show signs of receding, life will slowly return to something closer to its pre-COVID-19 patterns.When this happens, AHSs have an opportunity to be reshaped.