Key Resources Mentioned in Today's Episode

• CNBC Article: Hospitals are rescheduling elective surgeries but worry about demand after the backlog is cleared
• The New England Journal of Medicine Article: Where are all the patients?
• Our Qualitative Research Among Patients Awaiting Surgery

Key TakeAways

The Missing Domino 

• The volume recovery that we're seeing constrained on the surgical side is also happening on the nonsurgical side. We're trying to focus on how to replace that missing domino if all the earlier dominoes fall. 
• Surgical schedules are at risk of being anemic due to a lack of patients. Patients haven't seen their specialist, they haven't had diagnostic imaging, they haven't had lab work, and other crucial stepping stones that are necessary before surgery. 

Lower-acuity Services  

• Rapid Recovery that's focused on surgical volume is only going to solve a short-term problem. It won't solve the longer-term volume of getting people back into those other services that could lead to higher margin surgical volume or different types of treatment. 

Higher Level Funnel Services 

• Instead of starting at the very top of the funnel, we should begin with the part of the funnel that's just before surgery. You should ask: 
• Who's had a referral to a specialist who hasn't had that appointment fulfilled? 
• Who's had an appointment with a specialist but hasn't had their diagnostic imaging and their labs done? 
• Who has preventive screenings that were scheduled that haven't been fulfilled? 

Building Patient Confidence 

• We need to focus on the patient and where they are at emotionally. People are concerned about safety, cleanliness, and protocols, so we need to reassure them that they are safe with us.  
• There's an opportunity to be substantially more personalized because we know the patients that have surgeries on pause will have referrals.
• We need to focus on streamlining their care so we can reassure them and meet them where they're at from a messaging standpoint.  

The Missing Domino Takeaway 

• If you are not already pursuing a Rapid Recovery strategy that includes operations and marketing working hand in hand, start right now. You risk losing share to first advantage movers in your market otherwise. 
• Focus on proactive marketing, physician relations, and physician engagement around reaching all of those patients that will eventually be surgical patients or patients in higher-margin treatment services.  
• Start planning for fall and winter. If we don't prepare properly for the seasonal flu and a COVID-19 resurgence, the consumers and others might decide we're not able to handle the problem and could be forced into another shutdown scenario.