Technology Meets Healthcare Reform

Dr Jejuirkar

Helen Schifter has tried to be at the forefront of the technology boom in the health and wellness sectors, since its initiation. Schifter has done so by consistently providing and generating content about the value of health and wellness, and of maintaining a lifestyle that is in accordance and compliance with healthy living. She has consistently provided content that many deem to be valuable in the blogosphere. This content has the added benefit of educating audiences around the world, and readers of course; of the needs for a revolution in the healthcare space when it  comes to applying technology to the sector. 

There has long been a rather archaic and antiquated methodology to the way folks in the healthcare sector manage patient care; and most everything else. Their technological capacity has been unfortunately somewhat backward. In some cases, this has led them to simply being pariahs on the commercial scene; and especially in Silicon Valley. But in other cases, it  has had truly devastating, if not fatal consequences. 

Helen Schifter has written about these situations on her blog on Thrive Global. She’s done so with a great amount of enthusiasm but also a great degree of concern for the ways many in the healthcare have failed to adjust to basic technological developments and trends. This is most visible and problematic in the elder care industry. 

Since the start of this awful Coronavirus pandemic, elder care facilities have become a hotbed as a venue for an incredible amount of tragic fatalities. With elderly folks the primary population, they are undoubtedly most vulnerable to contracting the virus. Couple this with putting them in an environment that was not adept nor qualified to manage the pandemic, and you have an amalgamation of factors that led to an epic disaster. 

But as Schifter has noted, this problem did not begin yesterday; nor did it  begin the day before the start of the pandemic, or the news of its commencement. Instead, this has been a long time coming. There has always been little in the way of oversight concerning regulation of the elder care industry; and now the chicken is coming home to roost, so to speak.

These concerns should have been addressed well before this pandemic took root in our nation. Especially given the residents of these facilities being our population and society’s most elderly and therefore vulnerable, why was there not more compassion and therefore concern afforded to them? This issue should have been on the forefront of the minds of as many people as humanly possible. 

There should be a drive and an effort to employ influencers to communicate this important message to the masses. The public must be aware of the plight of elderly residents in such facilities; and the toll that the technologically background nature of many of these facilities are having on its patients. It’s truly a travesty of justice that policy lawmakers on Capitol Hill and also on a state and city level have done next to nothing up until now, to seek to assure family members of those residents that proper protocols and steps are taking place, in order to ensure they are being taken care of and that the very maximum is being done to afford them a comfortable and secure environment in which they can be taken care of. 

Helen Schifter views this trajectory as something that can be viewed through a constructive prism. In some ways, it’s a perspective that one can have where the Coronavirus pandemic brought these issues to the forefront – finally, in a way that nobody can now hide from. These were problems plaguing the healthcare industry more broadly for the last decade, especially as continued advancements in technology were taking place – with little to no reaction on the part of members of the industry, to seek to conform to the times. It’s a long time coming for these changes to be made on an administrative level by many of these facilities. Similarly, there needs to be a serious effort made for there to be new laws passed and legislation imposed that seeks to reform this industry. Only then will administrators and the executives in the industry feel that they are being watched and regulated in a diligent and serious manner. They need to comply with the laws and regulation; and understand that in the absence of doing so, there will be serious consequences – including legal ramifications, if applicable. Only such a fundamental and substantial deterrence factor can ultimately put a stop and dramatic change to this disturbing pattern.