Health Care Facing New Obstacles in the Pandemic – And Possibly New Opportunities

May 19, 2020 | Business Development

Photo by Army Medicine on Flickr

I remember one of the reasons I pursued a career in healthcare was because I saw it as an industry that was not affected by the economy. I learned that to be untrue pretty early in my career as I watched my employer, a small urgent care clinic in my hometown, be significantly affected by shrinking reimbursements by a shrinking local workforce due to the closing of multiple well-paying local factories.

Proven Wrong Again

I’m seeing this mindset as a myth once again. I see hospitals and health care systems suffer considerably due to the lack of utilization. Once COVID-19 cases began to subside, the Emergency Department of most hospitals have become ghost towns. Ancillary services associated with emergency medicine (pathology and radiology) have also suffered a huge blow. Notwithstanding, hospitals began canceling elective surgeries back as far as the week of March 9th.

The result: Layoffs, work-hour reductions, and talks of bankruptcy and closure.

Regardless – Opportunity

In a recent article, I shared the Federal government’s spending patterns usually did not decrease during an economic downturn, but increased. I have also seen in the last nine weeks, the number of opportunities associated with healthcare triple in the government space. Between January 1st of 2020 and Friday, March 13th, the government posted 86 healthcare-related announcements. These notifications were either requests for information, pre-solicitation notices, or requests for quotes/proposals for specific government opportunities. In the last nine weeks (3/15 thru 5/15), we have seen the government post 253 announcements.

The Point

The government continues to seek providers of services, specifically in this case, healthcare services regardless of the economic slowdown. These government opportunities may be the alternative revenue source that can get private healthcare providers through this rough time.

Call to Action

What other revenue sources are you going to tap into during this economic slowdown? Want more information about the healthcare opportunities the government has posted? Email me at [email protected].

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