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Recommitting to Resiliency and Emergency Preparedness in Health Care

By Bill Prentice

As we head further into 2022 and the third year of the coronavirus pandemic, I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to health care providers in every setting who have been working endless hours on the daily challenges this public health emergency presents while continuing to provide great care to patients.

The extraordinary contributions of those providing frontline care to coronavirus patients and the thanks they deserve for their continuing dedication cannot be overstated. At the same time, while their contributions during this time might not be as immediately apparent, ASC physicians, managers and staff across the country have also been providing critical services to patients in need.

The emergence of the coronavirus did not mean the disappearance of patients in pain or with rapidly deteriorating and debilitating conditions that require the safe, high-quality outpatient surgery that ASCs provide. As the virus surged, receded and reemerged in some new form, patients due for critical health screenings and other preventive care were also able to get that care safely in an ASC.

With staffing shortages nationwide, supply chain disruptions firmly in place around the world and ongoing uncertainty about which direction COVID-19 is headed next, 2022 isn’t letting up. I encourage everyone who reads this, if you need the services an ASC in your community provides, please get the care you need there, and if you know someone who has been working in an ASC – or in any health care facility in your community – through this pandemic, please thank them for their service.

Resetting for the Future

Acknowledging the unknowns we can still expect from this virus and other national and international threats that could erupt at any time, we need to focus now on determining what changes need to be made in the U.S. health care system and what our top priorities will be going forward.

During January, an interview aired by National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C., provided some guidance. That interview, conducted by NPR reporter Adrian Florido, featured Dr. David Marcozzi, chief clinical officer at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Marcozzi has led the medical center’s COVID response and also serves as a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Maryland.

Marcozzi talked about how, at the time, the U.S. health care system was confronting “a perfect storm.” That storm, he explained, was being created by a frustrated and tired workforce, large numbers of hospital employees in isolation after being exposed to or infected with COVID and a surge in the number of coronavirus patients coming to the hospital for care following the arrival of the Omicron variant and the large number of people who participated in previously postponed holiday celebrations at the end of 2021.

“… this is no longer just a COVID conversation,” Marcozzi added “This affects our ability to deliver care to people who have broken their arms or someone else who requires another emergent condition that is not COVID-related because now – because of so many patients coming through our doors and emergency departments across, certainly, our state and in our hospital – we’re having to figure out and prioritize patients who are needing urgent and emergent care and directing our resources and personnel to those individuals.”

In conclusion, Marcozzi said, “I hope that we are better after this,” and recommended convening a group that will “put everything on the table” and carefully consider how to create a resilient system with improved disaster preparedness built in.

While Marcozzi was speaking through the lens of a hospital administrator, his recommendations are valuable not just for hospitals, but for the entire U.S. health care system and deserve to be taken one step further. When groups convene to consider ways to enhance the resiliency and emergency preparedness of a community’s health care providers, all of the providers should be at that table and the most effective ways for them to participate in patient care in the community should be taken into account.

During the pandemic, ASCs were a model of resiliency and emergency preparedness. They adapted quickly to new conditions imposed by the virus and were able to resume providing safe, high-quality outpatient surgery almost immediately after the virus was identified. Additionally, those ASCs that shut down briefly during the earliest days of the pandemic to ensure hospital workers’ access to the protective equipment they needed were able to rely on procedures and policies already in place to re-open quickly and safely once those supplies were available and the ongoing need for outpatient surgical care became clear. Many ASCs could have provided care to many more patients during the times that hospitals were overwhelmed with coronavirus sufferers and would have welcomed the opportunity to help reduce the serious surgical backlogs that developed. In most cases, however, the systems needed to refer those additional patients to ASCs were not in place.

As the nation’s network of health care providers continues to confront the uncertainties that lie ahead, as Marcozzi suggests, we have an opportunity to become better than ever before. The healthiest communities are likely to be those that put patients first and work collaboratively to address the health care needs of their population.

Bill Prentice is the chief executive officer of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA).

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