COVID-19 has done more than hurt our health, it has also damaged our healthcare system, and steps are required to fix it, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

James Spencer, Data Scientist at GlobalData, comments: “Our healthcare industry is in dire need of financial help or a policy restructure to allow it the financial freedom to nimbly and precisely respond to our needs as a society without collapsing under its own financial overhead.”

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t just been a threat to the wellbeing of our populace, but to the continuation of our healthcare field as a whole. Due to the unexpected financial strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals are seeing their profit margins plummet, many times into the negatives. What this means is that our healthcare system is increasingly becoming financially unviable, which should be a terrifying thought for a country with a “healthcare as a business” model.

Spencer continues: “COVID-19 has produced a multi-pronged attack against the hospital system. Not only is the health of healthcare workers at risk from this highly infectious virus, but patients need more intense and longer-lasting care than previously. This longer, more intense care, coupled with a huge increase in patient burden, has caused burnout in a huge amount of the healthcare workforce. A February survey found that half of healthcare workers are burnt out, while a full quarter are thinking of leaving the healthcare field soon. This means that COVID-19 is attacking the physical health, worker populations, and financial health of the healthcare system.

“The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a large influx of patients who required, on average, 9.9% more inpatient time than the previous average. The hospital system responded to this by expanding treatment and care capacity through hiring many more staff and purchasing infrastructure and tools as needed. Of special note is COVID-19-specific purchases of personal protective equipment (PPE), which is largely useless in other uses. This all resulted in an average overall increase in expenditure of about 20% compared to 2019’s pre-pandemic era. What this means is that hospitals, which have small profit margins to begin with, are becoming increasingly financially unviable. Currently a full third of all hospitals are losing money due to these costs. How long can we sustain this before we start to see a reduction in our healthcare as a country, especially in the face of a possible new Monkeypox pandemic?”