Finding the Light

While it’s been an extraordinarily challenging past year, we can finally see the light at the end of the pandemic’s tunnel. This makes it an apt time to assess the state of the GI industry, COVID-19’s impact, and what needs to happen to help ensure an even brighter future for gastroenterologists.

From a macro perspective, GI maintains strong underlying demographics. The age of the population requiring GI care is declining. People are living longer, which translates to longer-term care. In addition, patients are moving away from considering GI as episodic care and toward viewing the specialty as an integral component of a care management program. These positives for the specialty have not been impacted by the pandemic.

On the other hand, telehealth has emerged and is here to stay, bringing with it a host of pros and cons. We’re still learning how to most effectively leverage and incorporate telehealth. We know it can enhance patient access and can provide gastroenterologists with even greater control over their practice. On the other hand, it creates some challenges around patient engagement, and there remain barriers to access for some of the most vulnerable populations. It will be some time until we fully understand how telehealth will affect GI.

The pandemic has reminded us that GI is an intensive and important occupation. As we look forward, we must assess how we take care of doctors better, going beyond productivity and efficiency. We must focus on how to improve the doctor’s experience alongside the patient’s experience.

We should also examine how changes in the doctor’s experience are affecting decisions about forward career planning. This would seem to point to more alignment with corporate partners. There’s pressure on practices to consolidate and share resources to allow for forward transition into future generations of GI.

Solo and small GI groups are trying to figure out their succession and transition plans. COVID-19 has made gastroenterologists think more about succession and stop pushing off future planning. As dialogue about transition planning becomes easier, corporate consolidation emerges as an important option.

Looking toward the future, the role of companies like PE GI Solutions in supporting and aligning practices and centers becomes more The pandemic has critical. A vertical model reminded us that GI such as ours is important for strengthening patient is an intensive and engagement while aligning important occupation. the provider experience with the patient to improve care delivery. This must be a vital focal point for the industry.

Finally, payers had a short-term financial luxury of missing a season of GI preventive care. Now they will hopefully be focused on ensuring support for gastroenterologists managing those issues patients put off that may lead to exacerbated problems. The role of payers and payer-type organizations supporting independent GI David Young, President & CEO, is more important than ever. PE GI Solutions