COVID crisis– A silver lining in despair

The year 2020 will remain a defining moment in global health history. The COVID-19 pandemic has put more strain on the healthcare industry, perhaps more than before. We are seeing a definitive shift in people’s attitudes towards hygiene and sanitation. Our warriors at the forefront of battling this disease, the doctors bore a massive brunt with nearly 500 doctors losing their lives.

The public and private healthcare infrastructures are still dealing with inadequate personnel and resources. The next normal for healthcare will look nothing like the normal we leave behind.

Care and COVID impact
At close to 77 lakh cases so far, India stands second globally on the map of the worst affected geographies. The aggressive move in identifying the virus clusters in the country and putting harsher restrictions in place to stop the spreading of the virus beyond those areas has been a welcome step in curbing the rise of cases. Fearing the coronavirus, various restrictions and transport issues during the lockdown, many patients delayed their visit to hospitals, which further led to delayed diagnoses. Due to this, we are seeing about 20 percent of cancer patients presenting themselves at the hospitals in their advanced stages. India has approximately 1,600,000 beds, and nearly 400,000 beds are alone in private healthcare that is majorly handling the cases in the common class and serving as the backbone of the country’s healthcare. In other words, the private healthcare sector has been playing a pivotal role in safeguarding a huge chunk of the country’s population during these challenging times.

The small and medium-sized hospitals have faced challenges both in dealing with the virus and the financial burden that comes along with it. The private healthcare sector (single speciality and multispeciality) faced a significant drop in its inpatient and outpatient footfall. India continues to struggle for the workforce in healthcare, due to the lack of basic amenities provided to them. The unavailability of masks and other protective gear for the force was proving to be a roadblock on the way to treating patients.

The health crisis has exposed the weaknesses of the public healthcare systems of the country. It has raised questions to successive governments (both at the center and in the states) for their decades of neglect and abdication of responsibility towards the sector. Our public spending on health remains low to 33 percent of the total healthcare spending–which is the lowest in the world. We rank 184 out of 191 countries in public spending on health.

The lack of proper healthcare infrastructure and medical investment can lead to worse scenarios in dealing with any crisis in the future if not adequately contained. There is a dire need to increase the spending on healthcare to strengthen the infrastructure. Innovative financing solutions are needed to make secondary and tertiary care more affordable to citizens while ensuring the sustainability of private hospitals. These prevailing challenges can be addressed with appropriate policy formulation. The government should create a policy environment allowing private players to work with them and facilitate the creation of such an infrastructure that can withstand any crisis in the future.

The silver lining and the new normal
The pandemic has been an eye-opener for us and has changed our core belief systems. It is an opportunity to strengthen our domestic healthcare delivery system and build a world-class healthcare infrastructure. It is making us head towards changing times and lifestyles by triggering new waves of healthcare awareness and digital health solutions. The crisis has upscaled the virtual care capacity and has spiked the usage of virtual consultations. The present situation will have a lasting effect on the adoption of telemedicine. Telehealth applications have been rising steadily for years and can also be used for tele-radiology and remote patient monitoring. It has emerged as a sustainable solution for prevention and treatment to the spread of COVID-19. Telemedicine helps in providing continued access and care to patients with chronic medical problems.

Through Big Data analytics, the hospitals and clinicians can gather valuable insights about the pandemic and develop effective treatment methods. For continuous medical and nursing education, e-learning modules have been adopted. Several libraries and repositories around the globe have made their clinical journals available online for doctors. Across the world, the clinicians came together and collaborated sharing their insights and guiding each other on COVID-19 treatment and protocols.

Once this crisis dies down, with technology playing a pivotal role, the healthcare institutions will shift their focus on strategizing a digital future and launch new initiatives. It is breaking the prejudice, thinking-barriers, and hesitation among doctors and patients to use teleconsultation for regular checkups. Mobile technology is another boon in such extreme crises, especially in rural areas, as it helps in getting quick assessment and information about the treatment given to the patients. One must always remember that crisis brings new opportunities; we must wait for one silver lining or a sliver of hope to sustain and witness the much-needed new beginnings in the healthcare sector with rising medical and drug innovations. Necessity is the mother of invention, and post COVID-19, the healthcare sector will have a plethora of new ideas to bridge the gaps.

Way forward
The COVID-19 crisis has thrown light on our existing public healthcare system and why there is a strong need to reset, reboot, and strengthen healthcare benefits to create a robust system in collaboration with the private players. The healthcare institutions and regulatory bodies should rethink, restructure, reform the existing processes and systems, and develop advanced ways to provide better healthcare to the last mile.

The government should focus on strengthening healthcare infrastructure development. We need to create modules that redefine our understanding of healthcare beyond the absence of diseases. Now is the time to assert innovative measures that are not limited to technological inventions. This is possible only through a global intervention that encompasses government policies and combines them with tactical measures for the greater good. It is imperative to look beyond populist measures and enforce stringent steps towards betterment. For this to happen globally, we need people with great understanding and vision as our future leaders. The pandemic is a wake-up call for the government living in a parallel universe cleaved from reality. It is high time the country shifts to a universal healthcare model so that the staggering costs of healthcare do not deter people from using the health services.