Opinionated Remember COVID?

What did we learn? Or have we just gone back to ‘normal’ without a thought?

There are clearly some huge positive developments that came out of the COVID crisis. We now know that we can develop an e ective vaccine in an amazingly short space of time. But how much has really changed in our sector? How many lessons did we learn from two years of coronavirus and will we be better equipped for the next global healthcare crisis?

The rise of data and digitally-led healthcare provision also received a huge shot in the arm as a result of COVID-19. We are now in an age where every element of healthcare delivery is digitally driven and the benefits of population health and data modelling for healthcare are known, desired and acted upon in every health system, driving more e icient delivery of care.

But this revolution in healthcare was going to happen anyway. The arrival of a global pandemic has not been the cause of a digital healthcare revolution, but it has hastened its arrival. In many ways that’s just as well, because one of the huge negatives of COVID has been its e ect on the global healthcare workforce.

An already impending crisis has been worsened massively by the pandemic causing a stressed, demotivated, underpaid and under-appreciated health care workforce. People have le the healthcare profession in droves and we cannot educate people quickly enough to replace them.

The wealthy economies of the globe must learn the lesson quickly that the time is rapidly approaching where health systems cannot rely on cheaper labour from less wealthy economies with a surfeit of supply in nursing or allied health professions. Growing your own workforce will have to become a key plank of the development of any health economy. And that workforce will inevitably become far more expensive. Just look to the current strikes in the UK where an exhausted workforce is refusing to accept that its hard work and e ort through unprecedented times has not been rewarded with the increases in pay and improvements in conditions that they demand.

Another area in which the world has flatly refused to learn the lessons of a pandemic is that of public health messaging. The fact

Steve Gardner Managing Director

that vaccination against a disease that threatened the very existence of humanity has become such a hot topic and divided some many people into pro and anti camps is a sad indictment of our times.

If our health systems need to learn one lesson for the next pandemic, it’s that we need clear, simple and decisive guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable in the face of a threat from a deadly disease. And this doesn’t mean not giving people a choice about whether or not to be vaccinated. It means making sure that choice is properly informed and that the way in which a society behaves during the darkest days of a pandemic is better policed, clearer and easily understood.

The worst days of COVID-19 are behind us now but, in our rush to return to normality, the concern is that even those of us involved in policy making, decision making, funding and delivering healthcare have all too quickly forgotten the lessons of the pandemic.

There will be another pandemic down the track so will we deal with this one any better? And will we learn our lessons next time?