Interview: John Couris

Getting ready

The pandemic put a spotlight on infectious disease and Tampa General Hospital is working to prepare for similar future events

What areas of demand have come to the forefront compared to pre-COVID? Infectious disease obviously is now at the forefront of a lot of what we do. Hospitals have always dealt with patients who have an infectious disease. Across the country, we’ve dealt with people with MSRA, the flu, chicken pox, smallpox, to name a few, but we have not dealt with anything quite like COVID-19. It showed us that infectious disease is something that we need to spend more time on. It’s probably here to stay and it’s taking different forms, given what’s happening around the world.

Tampa General Hospital is just one example among many but we built a new service line called the Global Emerging Diseases Institute. It’s an 80,000-square-foot facility that was Tampa General Hospital’s Acute Care Rehabilitation Hospital, which we moved inside the main facility on our campus because we’re building a new acute care rehab about a mile away. The institute is primarily focused on three pieces of infectious disease. First, it’s where most if not all of our COVID-19 patients are placed. It is clinical care, both inpatient and outpatient. Second, it’s focused on research. Third, it’s focused on education. It is a collaboration between Tampa General Hospital, the University of South Florida (USF) and our private practice physicians. The idea around it is to find ways to get highly proactive with infectious diseases, learning from the pandemic, taking those experiences and applying them on a goforward basis so we are ready for what could be the next epidemic or pandemic. In essence, we are establishing ourselves as a leader in infectious disease.

How has telehealth played out for Tampa General Hospital and where do you see it going? Telehealth has been wonderful. This is another example of a silver lining from COVID-19. Telehealth has been ready for prime time for several years. COVID-19 made it a necessity, the government funded it and continues to fund it and insurers funded it as well. The adoption of telehealth was almost instantaneous across the country. We are no different than any other major system or large decision group. We had a telehealth platform, we migrated to it easily and the transition was made overnight. We made the switch and it has worked beautifully. Hundreds of thousands of visits have been done on telehealth.

Our fear with telehealth is the reimbursement going away because its utilization will automatically dwindle. We really hope the government and our payers continue to fund telehealth. The technology works and people like it.

John Couris

President & CEO – Tampa General Hospital