Here is a very compelling article “COVID-19 revealed how sick the US health care delivery system really is” in The Street by Clarise Zoleta.

CURRENT CHALLENGES WITH UNITED STATES HEALTHCARE?

The improvement opportunities for United States Heath Care Efficiency is glaring and leaving patients behind, or worse.

1. Healthcare does not share or network information well.
2. Public Health Agencies and Medical Care providers are lacking.
3. Digital advances are impeded by inflexible technical and regulatory restrictions
4. Prolonged deficiencies in the Affordable Care Act and rising healthcare costs with epic unemployment have increased care costs reduced care options, and left many without healthcare in a pandemic.

We must evolve Healthcare delivery to meet evolving patient needs

1. Produce a high performance health care system
2. Address systemic defects that compromise patient care as priority.
3. Improve Digital Health Transfer Standards to integrate records
4. Create systemic Unique Patient Identifier to improve mismatched data record relationships that compromise care.
5. Improve Unique patient Id and Denied Claims Root Causes that cost Hospitals on average $1.2M annually.

You’ve Got Your COVID-19 Shot (Keep this Card)

If your first experience with Covid is Immunization, you get a window into the opportunity for improvement. If you were fortunate enough to receive your Covid 19 Immununization you very likely came out with a paper card confirming essentially “You’ve been shot”.

COVID 19 IMMUNIZATION is 25 year AOL Flashback

The 2021 Immunization Process is to look up how to get your shot, or wait to be called, go get the shot, and collect the “paper card confirmation”. Very much like old Dialup Internet Connection handshake, and glorious moment that affirms, “You’ve got mail”.

You’ve Got COVID LONG HAUL, No Job, No Doctor, No Healthcare. NOW What?

If you are one of the millions who experience COVID crisis, COVID long haul, and COVID emergency care with no job, no healthcare insurance, and denials of Medicare, you see this improvement opportunity from an even wider lens.

• 73% of Americans are covered under Private Healthcare insurance.
• 18% of Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
• 9% of Americans equates to about 30 Million people without Healthcare Insurance, who do not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, and can not afford Private healthcare.

Healthcare Worker: She is One of the 9% with COVID, without Healthcare:

Here is the story of a healthcare worker, whose story is much like many of American’s who got Covid-19 while they did not have insurance.

Her costs were $34,000 costs for her hospital treatment. Multiply that by how many trips you have to take to the hospital like this, to stay alive.

• $907 was the covid test cost, less than 2% of the total bill.
• Doctors and nurse care in isolation has to stay there, and anything in that room has to be billed to the patient whether or not is used.

If we recovered on that one big bill, like the story above, its so hard. Her situation was doubly hard in that she had lymphoma and covid, making her health issues and recovery difficult and painful.

Long Haul Introduced More Challenges:

If we have complications or Long Haul Covid, we have new challenges. We have to figure out how to recover, return to work, and pay off the massive bill. If we are the Long Haulers, who are unemployed, underemployed, and uninsured, we have to decide whether to take life saving measures or not.

Another woman was Covid Positive and hospitalized on June 4, 2020 with Covid 19 symptoms, stroke symptoms, and sudden onset diabetes. Since then there have been:

• 13 trips to the emergency room for life saving measures
• 3 of those trips by 911 ambulance with nitro tablets under my tongue.
• 1 trip was a sepsis crisis alert

A group of us created the COVID 19 Center of Excellence to help share ideas and resources when there were none. To find encouragement when we are not so sure we want to go to the doctor one more time. Maybe if we just stop seeking life savings, we are free of the pain, costs and uncertainty by becoming a death statistic, instead of a Covid Long Haul Unknown.

We share our experience, strength and hope, and maybe some community, health, or long haul recovery resources we helped our neighbors in this new COVID LONG HAUL community club no one wanted to be in.

• COVID19 Center of Excellence Website: http://covid19coe.com
• Covid Center of Excellence A-Z Guide