Three trending concerns in healthcare

Ever wonder what’s keeping your customers up at night? We did too, which is why we recently polled them on LinkedIn during this past “Get To Know Your Customer Day”. I doubt anyone in healthcare find the results surprising. All three are issues that have plagued healthcare for the past few years and they are interrelated.

Here’s what the majority of MedSpeed customers had to say when answering the question, “What is your team focused on?”

• 41% said supply chain issues
• 22% said labor shortages
• 22% said COVID surges

Serious supply chain issues in healthcare started at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak but have not fully receded even as more suppliers came back online. Becker’s Hospital Review spoke with several healthcare leaders last fall, and most agreed, “supply chain issues are here to stay.”

As Becker’s also reports, numerous studies indicate labor shortages and burn-out because of the pandemic:

• S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, issued an advisory on May 23 calling the country “to address a growing threat to our individual and collective health: health worker burnout”
• According to a May 11, 2022, McKinsey report, the United States could see a deficit of 200,000 to 450,000 registered nurses available for direct patient care by 2025
• Within the next five years, the U.S. faces a projected shortage of more than 3.2 million lower-wage healthcare workers, according to a Mercer report.
• The U.S. could face a shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians by 2034, according to data released on June 11 from the Association of American Medical Colleges

ECRI, a global, independent authority on healthcare technology and safety, recently put out their own Top Ten Patient Safety Concerns for 2022. While their list differed from what our customers told us, there were similarities. Their number one concern was staffing shortages, followed by the effect Covid-19 has on healthcare workers’ mental health. Further down the list at number 8, were international supply chain disruptions.

What I think all of this tells us is that while the top concerns may vary by list, the concerns of our customers reflect what is being felt across the healthcare spectrum. It’s never been easy to care for patients, keep your staff safe and produce positive outcomes. While we have learned a lot over the past 2.5 years about dealing with disruption, we are all going to have to continue to work together. This should start by supporting healthcare workers and continuing to find solutions that strengthen the healthcare supply chain.