As the pandemic drags on, part of what's helping turn the corner for communities and the healthcare providers who serve them is the additional resources - often including cash - provided by their governments.
In some ways it feels like we're seeing the beginning of the end of COVID-19, even though new variants continue to emerge with alarmingly different early-stage symptoms. What will finally get us from "things are looking better" to "things are looking good" is a continuation of the investment in public health news we saw this week.
- Kansas is one of many states providing direct assistance to healthcare providers so that they can increase their vaccination capabilities. The availability of both information about the vaccine and the vaccine itself is paramount in reaching high enough vaccination rates. (If you can handle yet another interview with Dr. Fauci, he provided a good one explaining just that on the YouTube channel below.)
- The continued, extremely promising results of even one vaccine dose ought to be enough to convince many people that they ought to be vaccinated. As we've seen with mandates that don't work and bonuses that work slightly better, the best convincer is confidence.
- Part of the effort to help public confidence in vaccines - as well as healthcare and science in general - is the newly organized task force to address "scientific integrity." And they're throwing a bunch of money at hospitals ready to increase their telehealth offerings. Because this will not be the last public health crisis we face. (It isn't even the only one we're facing right now.)
- To get ahead of potential stumbling blocks to a quick, effective response to the next pandemic, the U.S. is putting cash behind the development of antiviral pills (an easier alternative to vaccine jabs for many people), and Canada is shoring up its internal production of materials required to produce PPE. Which could obviously benefit American hospitals, too.
- And on a topic that's near and dear to our hearts, it's time to increase investment in analytics that benefits healthcare. Hospitals and other healthcare providers have done a great job of collecting massive amounts of information. But without AI-backed analysis, that data isn't useful to anyone.
Imagine - if you can - that a hospital has pages and pages of spreadsheets on its medical and surgical supplies but isn't using that wealth of data to make any meaningful changes to its ordering or organization. If that sounds far-fetched, either you've never been to our website before, or you're really confident that your staff is better than the average.
We'd be happy to give you an exact analysis of how much of your inventory might be headed for the trash before it can be used. Let's see if you beat the average excess supply amount of 15-30% of the total on-hand inventory.
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