New realities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic are reshaping healthcare IT in ways that affect leadership, employees, and patients, according to a panel of healthcare system executives convened virtually during the recent virtual CHIME21 Spring Forum, presented by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

At the beginning of 2020, physicians and consumers had not yet fully embraced the concept of virtual video visits; many were skeptical about the ability to deliver care effectively in this manner. Yet after the pandemic forced the adoption of virtual visits, perceptions and usage forever changed.

Today, asynchronous communication faces the same hurdles. Providers and patients don’t understand how it works and question its value.

Many COVID-19 patients have experienced a range of symptoms for weeks or months after the acute phase of their illness has passed. The National Institutes of Health calls the long-hauler condition post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC).

As an experienced trauma nurse with a master’s degree in emergency management, Lori Upton has been through a lot of disasters in the Houston area.

She’s experienced the hurricanes and tropical storms that southeastern Texas is vulnerable to, deployed to New York with a medical team after 9/11, and worked a regular job at a county Level I trauma center.

From there, she oversaw emergency department operations at several hospitals and now is vice president of disaster preparedness and response for the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council (SERTAC), also based in Houston.

After the pandemic ends, healthcare leaders may feel tempted to take the easy route and blame all the problems on the pandemic, including burnout. However, it’s not that simple. Of the physicians experiencing burnout, 79% said their condition began before the pandemic started.

Julie O'Shaughnessy, CHE, CPHQ, is the managing director at Huron Consulting Group and has more than 30 years of hands-on healthcare industry experience. She says that the high burnout rate can’t solely be blamed on increased pandemic workloads, but that it’s also “reflective of a myriad of inefficient systems and processes that can impact a healthcare provider’s well-being.”

Virtual reality (VR) is a virtual and technological environment with scenes and objects that simulate reality for the user. Glasses or a VR helmet can immerse the person visually and sensorially in a multitude of environments, including ones centered around health and disease.

The concept of VR started in the 1960s with Ivan Sutherland, who “attempted to describe VR as a window through which a user perceives the virtual world as if [it] looked, felt, sounded real and in which the user could act realistically” (Cipresso et al., 2018).

Sutherland (1968) explains that “the fundamental idea behind the three-dimensional display is to present the user with a perspective image which changes as he moves. … [I]f we can place suitable two-dimensional images on the observer’s retinas, we can create the illusion that he is seeing a three-dimensional object.”

In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of breaking news from the Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center since Inside Accreditation & Quality was last published.

Ready or not, yes, you must let surveyors on site at your hospital or other facilities even if they haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 yet.