Forgotten Patients

Blog post by Joe Babaian
Hi, I exist.     ~ Said by anyone overlooked, if they could only find their voice
During this ongoing pandemic, we’re all seeing the significant impacts on healthcare, including changing methods of delivery. As telehealth shows a vigorous ascendancy, in-person clinical care walks the tremulous line of reconsidering the value (or lack of) of waiting rooms, face-to-face patient interaction, paper-based intake, and more.
With the onset of rapid change, one thing sadly remains the same – access is not universal and one set of barriers are supplemented and replaced by a new range of obstacles facing patients. With the changes we have seen from the pandemic, segments of patient populations are facing:

Disruptions in primary coverage
Increased difficulty accessing public coverage options.
Evolution of the real impact from the Digital Divide (future collaborative #hcldr chat this year) on entire segments of the population.
Income disruptions.
Primary care reduced availability – face-to-face & difficult transition to telehealth for many based on internet access, education, comfort/trust, and fear.
Life disruption due to COVID19 infections and personal impacts on the patients themselves and or families that are recovering.

Often, what matters most in healthcare (life) is what is right in front of us! In addition to the new burden placed on the population due to COVID19, I’m also talking about the overlooked patients that have always been with us: the compliant elderly grandmother slipping deeper into dementia, the low-SES baby the doesn’t cry but fails to thrive, the weary cancer patient on chemo round three who just doesn’t want to be labeled a complainer.  And more.
You know these archetypes, yet do you really see them?
In healthcare, we run toward the shiny, the new, the cure , and for reason – progress is meant to lift everyone as a society – but we can’t think of only ourselves, we have to look at the greater good. We have to ask ourselves, are we truly in the service of the greater good for all? Echoes of Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons should be ringing bells for you here. While commonly associated with the depletion of natural resources, we can stretch it to not being selfish – working in healthcare for society. A noble cause, everyone agrees!
In our feverish and passionate work towards putting out fires so that we can tackle emerging challenges and creating a new, transparent healthcare system, we can’t always slow down. Building a system that allows access, education, and care for all is what we must continue to do. But. And you knew this was coming. We can’t make a hash of our humanity by overlooking the archetypes I listed. These are real patients that we see every day – at the clinic, at home, on rounds, in reports. We just have to look.
In The Overlooked Danger of...