Preparing for the Next Pandemic: How Healthcare Institutions Can Improve
It’s safe to say that health care pandemics are nothing new. The world has faced several of them, and historical observation reveals that the probability of future pandemics also exists.
Currently, there is a problem with health institutions that can hardly cope with the routine load. Should emergencies occur, it won’t take long for your capacity to be depleted. There is also no certainty or predictability of what may trigger the next epidemic or pandemic.
In many of these cases, panic situations such as resource shortages, lack of planning, and an unequipped healthcare workforce can cause further damage. In the same way, the lack of psychological resilience can generate more complications for crisis management. For this reason, it is vital to improve preparedness for the next pandemic-like situation.
Health institutions must incorporate learning from previous crises and equip themselves accordingly. The ultimate goal must be to minimize the loss of life and the widespread impact of pandemics as much as possible.
Here are some of the ways healthcare institutions can equip themselves to be better prepared for the next pandemic.
1. Healthcare Policy Update
Working within the same policy framework in all situations cannot explain the unpredictability of a crisis situation. Every emergency needs a different strategy than the one that runs the routine operations of healthcare facilities. It means that the current health policy needs extensive updates. The existing policy needs flexibility to adjust and modify the response of the institutions whenever the situation requires it.
For this update to work, health professionals and political diplomats cannot make informed, holistic decisions. Policy formulation also needs the involvement of technical staff, such as experts in health systems engineering, Science and Technology. Your set of skills can contribute to improving health institutions from a technical point of view. It is because managing health emergencies is not just about caring for patients and harnessing medical skills.
Preparations for future pandemics may require, for example, the creation of a rapid task force that is competent in handling emergencies. Policy changes could also involve improving health care infrastructure depending on the severity of the problems. Additionally, hospitals can focus on mimicking their presence in multiple locations to spread patient workload.
Therefore, health institutions must involve various experts in decision-making and focus on improving their policies. The more diverse the policymaking team, the more inclusive and better able to decide.
2. Focus on sanitary supplies
The shortage of health supplies is usually the most frequent problem during pandemics, given their increased use and demand. The crisis situation does not wait for hospitals to deliver supplies on time. The ongoing pandemic has also shown how limited medical supplies have added to the deteriorating situation.
Hospitals could not admit or facilitate even critically ill patients due to lack of medical tools and hospital beds. Patients were unable to use the drugs due to rising prices and limited availability. Similarly, healthcare facilities were unable to maintain workplace hygiene due to record consumption of sanitizers and disinfectants even outside of hospitals. Furthermore, health personnel had to risk their lives working without proper protective equipment.
Given these challenges, Covid-19 has become one of the most devastating health care crises in modern history. If the problems mentioned above continue to hamper the functions of the health care institution, future pandemics may be more devastating. Therefore, policymakers, equipment manufacturers, and pharmacologists must play their part in facilitating the health providers and services.
3. Facilitate and encourage research efforts
There is no doubt that research is inevitable to help the health system. Without the facilitation of research, health institutions would find it difficult to sustain themselves. Even minor and less threatening health conditions could have brought them down long ago. Well, this is how an infectious microorganism turned the world upside down during the ongoing pandemic.
Therefore, without the contributions of the research and scientific community, it would not be possible to unravel the genetic coding of viruses efficiently. Likewise, it is the research efforts of scientists that patients have hope for in the form of vaccines, drugs, and treatment procedures against various life-threatening diseases.
This means that research contributes to the constant refinement of medical procedures and their accuracy. This is how X-ray scanning, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound and positron emission tomography have emerged.
Apart from that, the exploratory efforts also detect gaps in the framework of medical care. For example, research observations show how hygiene Neglect at the community level increases health complications. So if workshops, training programs, and awareness campaigns can help patients become more aware of minor health issues early on, hospitals won’t suffer from the workload. In essence, preparing for future pandemics can also pay considerable attention to research.
4. Increase and prepare the health care workforce
Health problems continue to change, get complicated and progress over time. Unfortunately, healthcare institutions often face friction in keeping pace with parallel competition. That is why health personnel face unmanageable challenges, given work pressure, uncertainty and the knowledge gap.
The next pandemic could present novel challenges that would leave workers’ existing knowledge and preparation insufficient. Likewise, since the ongoing pandemic has already overwhelmed the capacity of the health care workforce, they cannot withstand further work pressure of a similar nature. Therefore, hospitals must include new programs and training to upgrade qualified members in addition to new recruits to their current health care teams.
Workers are more likely to succumb to a future pandemic if, for example, their emotional and psychological health is not given mandatory consideration. Therefore, in addition to medical skills, hospitals must also pay attention to building resilience.
Hospitals can also focus on minimizing operational challenges so workers don’t burn out during a regular routine. Otherwise, if hospitals do not focus on developing and improving the competence of workers, they may not be able to manage and contribute to crisis management. Therefore, increasing the health care team is one of the most crucial factors to prepare for the next pandemic.
5. Reassess the financial model
There is no doubt that every achievement has a price. The same applies to the fight against the next pandemic. As, the current pandemic has shown various shortcomings of health care institutions, including limited funding. That’s why reassessing your financial model is also a critical factor to consider when preparing for future emergencies.
One of the greatest frictions for progress is the lack of economic resources that makes it difficult for health institutions to function on a daily basis. Who knows, the future pandemic will produce even more damaging results. On top of that, the current health infrastructure lacks the capacity to hold additional reserves to deal with unpredictable crises. It means that the next pandemic could hamper the existing functionality of health institutions.
However, the lack of funding is not something that hospitals can solve alone. They need the help of donors and investors. These partners can help create professional skills development opportunities or equip healthcare infrastructure. Similarly, hospitals can also present their cases to government representatives and seek necessary assistance. Alternatively, hospitals can also re-examine their internal expenses and identify ways to minimize losses.
conclusion
This article highlights that the current state of health care institutions may not have the capacity to manage the next pandemics. Future pandemics may be even more dangerously devastating and overwhelming. Therefore, health care institutes need a thorough evaluation of their framework and increase their preparation accordingly. However, they cannot improve on their own. Without the support and facilitation of various other areas and stakeholders, the entire Health Care System will face the same fate as the ongoing pandemic.