The healthcare system, which has manned the front line of the fight against COVID-19, is in the midst of the biggest revolution it has seen in decades. Hospitals and HMOs are focusing their efforts on COVID-19 patients, but while the rest of their patients may be staying home, they still require care. To meet these patients’ needs, the healthcare system had to make an overnight transition and provide remote services.
The idea of telemedicine is an age-old dream that solves issues such as lack of resources, geographic gaps in access to care, and long waiting times. And now, all of a sudden, the dream is coming true.
Each hospital and HMO has separately made this transition on their own. They found ways to provide medical care, services, and treatment remotely. The leaders who recognized that this was a challenge best faced together were members of MAOZ’s INBAR program: Esti Shelly, Director of the Digital Health Division of the Israeli Ministry of Health; Talor Sax, CEO of digital health investor eHealth Ventures; Oded Shtemer, Regional Managing Director at Leumit Health Services; and Lilach Didi, Quality Assurance Coordinator at Galilee Medical Center. Additional fellows from the program quickly joined them: Professor Arad Kodesh, Head of Mental Health Services at Meuhedet Health Services; Dr. Efrat Gil, Head of Geriatric Service at Clalit Health Services, Haifa and Western Galilee; Chani Sakal, Head Dietitian at Leumit Health Services; and Adi Reisenleiber, Administrative Director at Schneider Medical Center.
Organizations’ needs are indeed unique, and they inevitably compete for funding and patients; however, they also share many professional, technological, legal, and regulatory challenges. Working together allows them to identify solutions together and break through barriers.
The transition to telemedicine is much more complicated than just deciding to have a video chat or phone call. The entire worldview and infrastructure which exist behind the scenes must be adapted to the new world. Which cases are suited for remote treatment, and which aren’t? Which patients are capable of using technology? How can we utilize this change to make things better? What kind of training do the doctors and medical staff need? What new risks does this pose? What technologies are available?
The answers to some of these questions can be found within our organizations while others can be found elsewhere, requiring us to identify them ourselves.
This is why, with the help of MAOZ, we founded the Telemedicine Community – to learn together and develop solutions. To get started, the group researched how medical learning communities, such as the American Telemedicine Association, looked and worked. The first meet-up had over 200 attendees: healthcare executives, hospital directors, remote service managers, and medical personnel working in the field. MAOZ Network members made up 30 of the attendees.
The attendees were divided into the following specialized workgroups: nutrition, psychiatry, gynecology and pediatrics, genetics, geriatrics, general practice, technology, oncology, and rehabilitation medicine.
By sharing personal stories and demonstrations, each group mapped the challenges, the existing solutions, and the barriers, and offered ideas and visions about what could be done.
The transition is highly complex. Driving adaptive change in so many fields at once is no simple matter. But the connections forged in this group will spark solutions and initiatives that will propel the medical field forward, make quality medical care accessible to more patients, and result in unprecedented collaborations between organizations that had previously seemed incompatible.