Pandemic Lessons Learned Will Serve Us Well in 2021
Good morning!
This week I found myself thinking ahead a little bit to what’s next, when the pandemic is finally over.
Before I delve into that, I’ll share the latest on where we stand with the coronavirus.
New cases in Mississippi, which have been well over 1,000 the last few days, are back to our summertime highs and still rising. Mississippi schools are having new outbreaks and many are moving to a virtual learning environment. Unfortunately, indoor gatherings of friends and family during the Thanksgiving holiday will only make a bad situation worse. Public health authorities keep pleading with people to wear masks and take other simple precautions, but I fear many have simply tuned out those appeals. That’s no reason to stop trying.
Our inpatient COVID-19 numbers continue to track in the 50s. We are beyond capacity in most adult units, which is not unusual for us. A surge in new COVID-19 hospitalizations after the holiday would put us in a difficult spot.
The good news is that we are far better prepared for a surge than we were even six months ago. All of our procedures are in place and have been refined. Our clinical teams and support staff are superbly trained. We’re far better supplied with PPE than before. And we have new therapeutic tools, including an experimental antibody, that we didn’t have at the outset.
The really good news is that two very effective vaccines are on the way. We still do not have details about a vaccine distribution plan, but it’s almost a certainty that the Medical Center will figure in whatever strategy emerges. Once deployment of the vaccines begins, I’m hopeful that will mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
This week I spent some time virtually attending the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges, the organization that represents the interests of medical schools and academic medical centers in the United States and Canada. The content was greatly pared down from the AAMC’s normal meeting, but there were a number of topics that caused me to turn my focus more on the future beyond the pandemic.
I’m pretty confident in saying that 2021 will be an improvement compared to 2020. Yet next year, after we’ve established some semblance of control over the virus, 2021 will offer its own set of more conventional challenges, among them regulatory changes in health care that will potentially have a negative impact on AMCs, greater numbers of uninsured patients, pressure from well-financed competitors, workforce shortages, and the ever-present need to do all that we do now but to do it better, faster and cheaper.
My main takeaway from the meeting is that the experience of the last 10 months has prepared us like nothing else could for whatever lies ahead. Our response to the pandemic engaged all of our clinical, research and educational capabilities – truly an all-out effort.
In the process, we learned important things about ourselves:
- We can move fast and be flexible when the situation requires it.
- We are resilient. Nothing in our collective experience has tested us as this pandemic has.
- We are innovative and can devise solutions on the fly, even when conditions aren’t perfect.
- We have aligned our missions with our priorities like never before.
- In just 10 months, we’ve made telehealth a much more integral part of our health care platform.
- We are engaged in important dialogues about our state’s health care disparities, which the pandemic has exposed in stark relief.
As we look ahead - and at some point we must look ahead - I challenge each of us to shift our lens to capture the lessons learned from the pandemic and to think about how we will use these experiences to move us forward in 2021.
We know the pandemic is not over. In fact, the worst may still be ahead of us. But I am confident that we are ready for whatever comes our way, in this or any other year.
I hope you will take all necessary precautions during Thanksgiving and take the opportunity to rest, recharge and remain #UMMCStrong.
