Podcast: California’s COVID-19 Lessons
Editor’s Note: The following is part of an ongoing series offering our strategic advice and expertise on what healthcare industry stakeholders should do immediately in response to the rapidly evolving novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
In a new Marsh & McLennan Advantage's podcast, Sam Glick, a Partner in Oliver Wyman's Health & Life Sciences practice, and Alice Chen, MD, MPH, Deputy Secretary for Policy and Planning and Chief of Clinical Affairs with California Health and Human Services, discuss COVID-19's impact and response across California, one of the hardest-hit states in the US. They also discuss the pandemic's lessons learned so far for healthcare leaders, and whether a balancing act exists between public health and the economy.
Memorable Moments
- "From the very early stages of the pandemic, we were looking at data broken down by race and ethnicity and realized our data systems weren't capturing this right. And so the first order of business is actually even knowing how bad the disparities are."
- "If I had a magic wand, I'd take the 18 percent of GDP we spend in healthcare and frankly redirect a lot of it to poverty reduction and early childhood investment. Because we actually don't need all the healthcare that we have."
- "We came up with a six-indicator framework for how to move forward responsibly in reopening society and those include efforts that have been just enormous lists by really talented people working around the clock."
- "On the private sector side and in healthcare, I've been really impressed by all of the hospitals that have really stepped up and offered partnership and in standing up alternate care sites, staffing, supplies really trying to come together to serve community need."