Dennis Pullin, president and chief executive officer, Virtua Health: Due to the need for hospital beds, many of us have thought about staying in the hospital at home. And then when CMS made it easier for us, we really got up to speed and now have a thriving program. But we still need those policymakers to make this a sustainable, long-term path to patient care.
From a graduate medical education perspective, how do we get our policymakers to expand residency positions? How do we make cross-state licensing easier when we talk about telemedicine? It can sometimes take four months for a clinician to receive their license, so we have to become more assertive with our policymakers to help us do those things.
The pandemic has also shown us that people are willing, interested, and more interested in remote healthcare experiences. Now we see our doctors are more inclined to participate in the telemedicine experience.
The models and platforms we hold dear, we’ve done the same way for the last 50 or 60 years. It’s time for us to be broken. Those of us responsible for taking care of our communities should promote that disruption. And I think if we had support, from a policy perspective, that would allow that to happen faster.
