Chibueze Okey Agba, Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare's executive vice president and CFO, discussed the lessons he's learned during the pandemic and changes the healthcare industry needs to make on a recent episode of "Becker's Healthcare Podcast."
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are the big trends you are following most closely in healthcare today?
Chibueze Okey Agba: As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us a lot in healthcare. One of the things that COVID taught us is that some of the old care models are obsolete, and our patients are no longer really our patients. Our patients are now our customers, or they are consumers, and they make decisions on how to receive care. So today we really need to take advantage of what we learned during the pandemic and develop innovative ways to meet our patient/customer needs, including how we communicate with them, including whatever medium they wish to be communicated using. And we really need to adapt our communication medium to how the patients prefer it, whether they prefer email, text messages or phone calls. That's what we need to employ as a way to get to our patients in order to provide them the type of care they need.
In addition, we have to really rethink what it means when a patient is feeling sick. In the traditional way, when a patient feels sick, he or she will go to the hospital emergency department, and from there possibly to the inpatient ward. The new norm is different. Now these patients don't need to go to the emergency department or to urgent care. We can actually evaluate the patients while they're at home. And if hospitalization is needed, we can send them to the hospital or actually provide them the care in their homes. These are some of the innovative ways that we really need to think about today in the way to provide care to our patients.