By KIM BELLARD

2020 is almost over; thank goodness.  It has been one of the strangest, and longest, years most of us have ever endured.  We’ve all probably known someone who contracted COVID-19; many of us have had lost loved ones from it.  Most of us have had to make drastic changes to our lives – masks, social distancing, limits on family visits, eating out, concerts, or trips among them.  No, 2020 can’t get over fast enough.

I was struck, though, by a quote I recently read.  Loren Padelford, a vice-president at Shopify, told The Wall Street Journal: “Covid has acted like a time machine: it brought 2030 to 2020.” 

Gosh, I hope not.

Mr. Padelford went on to explain: “All those trends, where organizations thought they had more time, got rapidly accelerated.” These trends include the shift from physical to online, further decline of cash, and work from home/remote learning.  Individuals/families without broadband are being left behind; companies not investing in IT and logistics may not be here in 2030.  Healthcare has not been exempt from these trends.

The pandemic has illustrated both the great strengths and the great weaknesses of the U.S. healthcare system.  Among the strengths are the courage and professionalism of our health care workers, the innovation that has delivered several vaccines within a matter of months, and the ability to adapt to an existing but underutilized mode of care in telemedicine. 

Among the weaknesses, of course, are the lack of planning and coordination that has doomed testing, contact testing, and supply of personal protective equipment; the patchwork quilt of insurance coverage that has left even more without coverage (e.g., due to loss of job based coverage and/or lack of Medicaid expansion); the refusal of many to act in their own best health interests, such as not wearing masks or taking vaccines. 

Legislators/regulators may be taking bold actions like throwing money at healthcare organizations, vowing that the COVID testing and vaccines are “free,” and loosening restrictions on telemedicine, but the underlying disfunction in our healthcare system has never been more visible.  We don’t test enough or fast enough.  We have sick people on gurneys in gift shops, we have dead people in refrigerator trucks, and we still have people crushed by their healthcare bills.

Please, don’t let this be a picture of 2030.

By KIM BELLARD

I’ve never seen The Mandalorian.  I don’t have Disney+.  But I know who Baby Yoda is, and I’m pretty sure Disney is counting on that.  Hollywood, in case you haven’t been paying attention, is going through some radical changes.  There may be some lessons for healthcare in them. 

2020 has been the year of streaming.  Moviegoing isn’t entirely dead in the pandemic, but it may be on life support, with major chains like Regal and AMC barely staying out of bankruptcy.  “Yes, there is pent-up demand to see movies in a theater,” Hollywood insider Peter Chernin told The New York Times.   “But people change their habits.”

Indeed, they do.  A new Press Ganey survey found that telemedicine visits shot to 37% of all visits in May, then settled down to around 15% – far above less than 1% pre-COVID-19.  Habits do, indeed, change, even in healthcare. 

Hollywood has made some startling announcements in the past few weeks that illustrate how swiftly changes are coming to the entertainment industry:

Disney: Disney expects to have 100 new titles – TV shows or movies – each year for the next few years.  Disney chairman Bob Iger noted modestly: “The pipeline of original content we’re making is much more robust than originally anticipated.”  Of particular note, though, CEO Bob Chapek said, “Of the 100 new titles announced today, 80 percent of them will go to Disney Plus.” 

NYT characterized the move as: “Here is a 97-year-old company making a jump to direct-to-consumer hyperspace.”  (If you don’t get the reference, you probably didn’t get the Baby Yoda one either). 

The strategy appears to be working.  Disney said that its year-old Disney+ streaming service already has 87 million subscribers; it had originally projected to reach this number by 2024.  Now it expects to reach 260m subscribers by 2024.  And those numbers do not include Disney services Hulu (39m) and ESPN+ (12m).  Collectively, Disney now expects up to 350m subscribers by 2024.