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If you can believe it, it’s already been half a decade since the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic.
Since then, more than 1.2 million people in the US and 7 million people globally have died from the virus, according to CDC and WHO estimates. And while the Department of Health and Human Services declared the public health emergency over on May 11, 2023, hundreds of people in the US still die from the virus each week, the CDC’s data tracker shows.
For the five-year anniversary of the pandemic’s beginning, executives from across healthcare shared with Healthcare Brew how the public health crisis reshaped their sector of the industry, the lessons they learned from it, and how they’d respond if a similar crisis happens again.
What Covid changed. Joan Fallon, founder and CEO of Curemark, a clinical-stage biopharma company that focuses on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, said the pandemic changed pharma by slowing down research and development.
“For example, when we would send a sample for testing, what normally took two to three weeks to complete took five to seven weeks,” she said. “Protocols changed, staffing was minimal, and the large industrial labs had new precautions and new rules to follow. This really slowed everything down.”
Desiree Gandrup-Dupre, SVP of information technology and care delivery technology services at Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente, told Healthcare Brew a big change the health system has seen is that patients are more willing to use telehealth.
“Patients have embraced telehealth as an integral part of their care but not a replacement for in-person care,” Gandrup-Dupre said.
Today, more than 31% of Kaiser’s ambulatory care visits are done via telehealth, she added.
Brendan Carr, CEO of New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System, echoed the importance of incorporating technology into patient care, saying Covid “highlighted the need for healthcare delivery to modernize.”
“The office visits and hospitalization model is dated. A massive disruption will happen over the next decade,” Carr said.
Lessons learned. Sandra Lindsay, VP of public health advocacy at New York-based Northwell Health (and the first person in the US to get a Covid vaccine), told Healthcare Brew the pandemic highlighted the need to build public trust in the healthcare system through transparency.
It also “laid bare the deep inequities that exist across our communities, making it clear that we cannot achieve better health for all without addressing the social determinants of health,” she said.
Florian Otto, co-founder and CEO of health tech company Cedar, said he learned the importance of flexibility and meeting patients where they are, whether that’s through virtual or in-person channels.
“There’s much more movement right now…in terms of [patients’] financial situations, where they live. They’re much more willing right now to switch providers,” Otto said. “How to engage with each patient is way more important,” he added, as patients change jobs and health plans more often today than in the past.
Future response. If a similar crisis were to happen in the future, John D’Angelo—EVP, market president, and chief of integrated operations at Northwell—said the first step the health system would take is to make sure there’s strong communication between its hospitals, labs, and public health partners.
Lindsay said she’d place an even greater emphasis on health equity and making sure resources reach underserved communities. (Vaccine rollout to marginalized communities and rural areas was complicated due in part to patient hesitancy and distrust in facilities.)
“If we are to honor the lives lost and the sacrifices made during the Covid pandemic, we must commit to learning from those painful lessons—not just in theory, but in practice,” she said. “This moment in history taught us what’s possible when we come together, and we must carry that forward with urgency and intention.”