It’s hard to say just how much light we are glimpsing at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but the current dominant variant, Omicron, has certainly reduced the impact per case compared to the previous two dominant variants. Fewer hospitalized patients and fewer deaths per million cases are no small blessing when you co…
It’s hard to say just how much light we are glimpsing at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but the current dominant variant, Omicron, has certainly reduced the impact per case compared to the previous two dominant variants. Fewer hospitalized patients and fewer deaths per million cases are no small blessing when you consider that we are being saturated with this highly contagious variant and watching active cases shoot to new daily records close to 25 million confirmed cases nationwide. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that we are still locked in a battle royale for the health of the economy, and we need to make every dollar count. When this catastrophe began, we were grabbing for straws and throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it, hoping to contain it and minimize the damage. It was a natural response to declare an emergency and appropriate trillions of dollars toward stopping it in its tracks. That didn’t work. A major portion of the spending went towards buttressing the health care system to withstand the onslaught of serious, critical and fatal cases that would ensue. Payout guidelines were established to compensate hospitals and health care providers for all COVID-19 services rendered. We could not stand by and watch medical services crumble under the weight of a pandemic. That was then. This is now.
Now we are faced with the mop up and reconciliation of all accounts relevant to the disaster. We are facing the highest inflation rate in 40 years due, in part, to the massive deficit spending we engaged in to mitigate the plague. Now, we can take a breath and try to ramp up the bilge pumps to avoid an even greater disaster, an economic meltdown.
To that end, we should probably take a serious look at re-evaluating the pay scale for COVID services. Is it unconscionable to consider that we may have motivated poor outcomes by paying more for them than good outcomes? It is common knowledge in the health care trade that the emergency funding for COVID-19 cases was well defined and readily available for those who met the criteria, the criteria being largely defined by the seriousness of the case. Would it not be in everyone’s best interest if we took this opportunity to “flip the script” and devise a compensation scale that hinged on outcomes rather than simple diagnoses? The ultimate goal of health care is to pay for healing, not simply prolonged treatment. Paying more for the losses than the wins seems counterintuitive to me. There should be enough motivation to promote therapeutic advances while reducing any monetary incentives to admit or prolong unnecessary treatment of COVID-19 patients. I realize that it is a fine line between responsible and irresponsible treatment, but we have the time to figure that out. We have the time to compare costs, treatment and outcomes to other serious respiratory ailments and adjust the pay scale accordingly. The savings might not only be measured in billions of dollars but, hopefully, human lives.
Dear NWF Daily News,
It’s hard to say just how much light we are glimpsing at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but the current dominant variant, Omicron, has certainly reduced the impact per case compared to the previous two dominant variants. Fewer hospitalized patients and fewer deaths per million cases are no small blessing when you consider that we are being saturated with this highly contagious variant and watching active cases shoot to new daily records close to 25 million confirmed cases nationwide. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that we are still locked in a battle royale for the health of the economy, and we need to make every dollar count. When this catastrophe began, we were grabbing for straws and throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it, hoping to contain it and minimize the damage. It was a natural response to declare an emergency and appropriate trillions of dollars toward stopping it in its tracks. That didn’t work. A major portion of the spending went towards buttressing the health care system to withstand the onslaught of serious, critical and fatal cases that would ensue. Payout guidelines were established to compensate hospitals and health care providers for all COVID-19 services rendered. We could not stand by and watch medical services crumble under the weight of a pandemic. That was then. This is now.
Now we are faced with the mop up and reconciliation of all accounts relevant to the disaster. We are facing the highest inflation rate in 40 years due, in part, to the massive deficit spending we engaged in to mitigate the plague. Now, we can take a breath and try to ramp up the bilge pumps to avoid an even greater disaster, an economic meltdown.
To that end, we should probably take a serious look at re-evaluating the pay scale for COVID services. Is it unconscionable to consider that we may have motivated poor outcomes by paying more for them than good outcomes? It is common knowledge in the health care trade that the emergency funding for COVID-19 cases was well defined and readily available for those who met the criteria, the criteria being largely defined by the seriousness of the case. Would it not be in everyone’s best interest if we took this opportunity to “flip the script” and devise a compensation scale that hinged on outcomes rather than simple diagnoses? The ultimate goal of health care is to pay for healing, not simply prolonged treatment. Paying more for the losses than the wins seems counterintuitive to me. There should be enough motivation to promote therapeutic advances while reducing any monetary incentives to admit or prolong unnecessary treatment of COVID-19 patients. I realize that it is a fine line between responsible and irresponsible treatment, but we have the time to figure that out. We have the time to compare costs, treatment and outcomes to other serious respiratory ailments and adjust the pay scale accordingly. The savings might not only be measured in billions of dollars but, hopefully, human lives.
Norris Mealer