Focused on the future
It’s an understatement to say that COVID-19 has forever changed the practice of medicine. The health care industry will need to transform.
For some time now, GI practices have discussed the consequence of disruptive innovation affecting utilization of endoscopic procedures. We were looking at technology that might eventually replace office personnel. No one was thinking about a pandemic that would cause nearly overnight closure of endoscopy suites and curtail the entire in-office administrative workforce. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be the catalyst that brings many innovations into the mainstream.
We’ll most likely see a transition to the virtual medical office for those visits that don’t require a patient to see a physician in person. This will make online scheduling and registration, on-demand messaging, and remote patient monitoring and chronic care management necessities.
We may also see more rapid adoption of technologies that allow information from health trackers and wearables to be integrated into EMRs that easily follow the patient from physician to physician. Administrative support and patient assistance from remote locations will become the norm.
Inquiring about how practices plan for emergencies and how their leadership thinks about the future of gastroenterology is a great way to show that you’re thinking holistically about health care delivery and how medicine is practiced now and in the future.
So much has changed in the decades I’ve been practicing medicine and so much is yet to change. As early-career GI physicians who are familiar with new technologies, you are in a great position to lead the practices you join into the future of gastroenterology.
Dr. Weinstein is president and CEO of Capital Digestive Care and the immediate past president of the Digestive Health Physicians Association.
