Dennis Pullin, president and CEO, Virtua Health: Because of the demand on hospital beds, many of us have been flirting with the thought of hospital-at-home. And then when CMS made it easier for us to do, we really did accelerate and now have a thriving program. But we also still need those policymakers to make this a sustainable, long-term avenue to take care of patients.
From the graduate medical education perspective, how do we get our policymakers to expand residency slots? How do we make multistate licensure easier to do as we talk about telemedicine? Sometimes it can take four months for a clinician to get their license, so we have to become more assertive with our policymakers to help us do those types of things.
The pandemic also showed us that people are willing, interested and many prefer to have a healthcare experience remotely. We now see our physicians are more inclined to participate in a telemedicine experience.
The models and platforms that we embrace so dearly, we’ve been doing the same way for the last 50 or 60 years. It is time for us to be disrupted. Those of us responsible for taking care of our communities should drive that disruption. And I think if we have the support, from a policy perspective, it will allow that to happen faster.
