Advice to healthcare CFOs on how they can help ease the burden on clinicians in the ongoing battle against COVID-19. An insight by Shuchin Bajaj, Promoter and Director, Ujala Cygnus Hospital
As finance leaders, we have to ensure our clinicians that we are providing them with every kind of support in such unprecedented times. This not only boosts the morale of the clinicians but also helps them strengthen their relationship with the organisation. Being able to provide the proper equipment to prevent healthcare workers from getting sick is also part of our mission. This is why we’re working on addressing the shortages of protective equipment.
When there is a surplus of supplies, distributing the protective equipment in the areas where there is a need is also a task. We need to pool these supplies and equipment with other healthcare CFOs in the other regions so that they can be shared across the country. There is no doubt about the fact that if we stand up together against the battle with COVID-19, we certainly have a better chance to combat the effects of the COVID-19. Having the capability to share equipment and supplies would allow us to do so without being cluttered with supplies.
Since India has a poor doctor-patient ratio, the need of the hour is to deploy more staff members, who have relevant experience in critical care including ventilation therapy. We can also think of recruiting retired nurses, clinicians, physicians to ease out the burden as they don’t need any special training to treat critically ill patients. Physicians, who so far have been taking care of the elective surgeries, could be used in triaging patients. Keep your emergency deployment plan handy.
Let’s talk about testing
Have you ever wondered why the mortality rate was low in Germany as compared to India? It’s because they took part in an aggressive testing process, which helped them to identify the asymptomatic carriers. They had tested each and everyone and put the positive ones under strict quarantine for two weeks.
Rigorous testing is beneficial for healthcare staff too as it allows the carriers to stay out of hospitals or in a special ward. Initially, everything looked haphazard. The most shocking thing about the whole pandemic management was that some of the highly-developed countries in the world with the highest healthcare spend per capita was way less sophisticated than countries like South Korea or even China in that regard.
Role of CFOs if their organisation are not yet immersed in crisis management
As a CFO, you can also prepare a set of clear and actionable guidelines and checklists to guide your organisation through the various scenarios that may arise if the situation worsens. Set up telehealth facilities to reduce the patient load. Ask your non-essential workers in the hospital to work from home and avoid visiting hospitals in worse scenarios to minimise their exposures.
In general, try to reduce the patient footfall and other traffic to the hospital. Postpone any projects that are not essential right now, such as renovations, construction, reorganisations and so on. Once you’re experiencing an increase in the suspected covid patients in the organisations, this is the moment when you need to take care of the patients as well as the clinicians. Talk to the clinicians to understand their immediate needs. Take prompt action against all the needs suggested by them and at the end of the day do check how many issues got mitigated.
