When coronavirus attacked Colorado's health, it changed the state's health system forever
I thought this was an interesting read from the Colorado Sun.
Here's one tidbit that surprised and impressed me:
"Under arrangements promoted by the state and the Colorado Hospital Association, intensely sick patients from Lincoln County or other hospitals with small or nonexistent ICUs could be transferred easily to bigger Front Range hospitals. For both patient care and financial reasons, the smaller hospitals sought a trade: Send recuperating patients who still need a hospital to rural towns for personal care and restful recovery."
And in talking about telehealth: (bold added by me)
"Keeping even chronic-care patients away from the hospital — to avoid infection and to make room for virus cases — also taught UCHealth how to speed up innovation. The system accelerated its efforts to use monitoring devices on patients in their homes to watch for dangerous changes, in lieu of being hooked up to the same devices in a hospital bed.
Care in diabetes, one of the most life-impacting and costly chronic conditions, is a good example, Kane said. Diabetes is both a mathematical disease, requiring intensive measurement and monitoring, and a broad disease cutting across endocrinology, diet, nutrition, eye care and more. Under traditional models, it can take 18 months for a newly diagnosed patient to consult every specialist, discuss tests results on followup visits, come up with a treatment plan and then go through the intensive education required.
By scheduling that serial diagnosis, education and care with remote telehealth, the same intake can be done in a few weeks, Zane said. Longer term, he said, UCHealth will find a “happy medium” between remote care and its still-growing bricks-and-mortar Anschutz Campus. “There’s just not enough endocrinologists or psychiatrists in Colorado, among others, and this allows us to reach that needed scale,” he said, “by better use, and more facile use, of care.”
Full article here: https://coloradosun.com/2021/03/03/coronavirus-changed-colorado-health-system-for-good/
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