Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

In health systems across the world, screening programmes and non-emergency surgical operations have been postponed and cancelled to reduce transmission and free up capacity to treat Covid-19 patients. The USA, UK and Canada have been working to re-start non-COVID related healthcare since the first wave of COVID-19, with subsequent COVID-19 surges creating further challenges, particularly for those countries who are yet to tackle healthcare waiting lists. Those working to reduce the backlog report that some patients continue to defer seeking care so not to increase pressure on services, or because they fear catching the virus. Continued delays will decrease quality of life, increase treatment costs, and worsen outcomes, as the conditions individuals are suffering from deteriorate. There may also be knock-on effects on social care. Consider the measures explored by the UK, USA and Canada:

• Proactively engage the public (e.g. through local communications) to instill confidence in the safety and continued functioning of healthcare systems and encourage them to seek care if they need it
• Ensure ample PPE is available to prevent unnecessary challenges in the delivery of health and social care
• Inform plans by developing rigorous forecasts of future patient demand and service pressures
• Enhance national and local partnerships developed during the pandemic to address the backlog of people needing care. For example:
  • Begin to increase resource capacity through recruitment now to ensure sufficient capacity is available in the future
  • Extend surgical operating hours, including at weekends
  • Draw on volunteers to support vaccination programmes to enable trained healthcare staff to focus on elective care
  • Pool resources between local hospitals and centralize waiting lists so that patients can be treated wherever there is capacity
  • Make greater use of virtual care to increase outpatient access
  • Pilot alternative health care testing programmes (e.g.home testing kits for HPV)