DC Releases Post-COVID Healthcare Report July 26, 2021

Last weekend, the District government released a new report with "lessons learned" from the COVID pandemic.

Entitled "District of Columbia Department of Health COVID-19 Pandemic Health and Healthcare Recovery Report", the report has two halves. The first details the District's response to the pandemic and outlines how the District government acted to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on health, the economy, and society.

The second half contains recommendations going forward, and this is the focus of the report. This section breaks into five components:

• Health Planning
• Public Health and Healthcare Workforce
• Health Information Technology
• Health Care Facilities
• Community Health Services

Each component has an analysis and listed recommendations for the Council and District government to consider. You can read the entire report here, but below are a few items of interests to the physician community:

• Explore regional licensure reciprocity to allow local healthcare professionals to more easily practice in the District
• Examine whether new licensure categories are needed to reflect new modules of care
• Explore whether "certain procedures" that "traditionally require specific oversight" should be "re-examined" for more flexible supervision options.
• Assess and potentially redefine training or supervision levels with "an emphasis of supervision truly required for safe patient care".
• Push for common telehealth scopes of practice across state lines
• Provide consumers with instruments and training for telehealth monitoring

What is not in this report?

• Resources to address healthcare provider burnout and behavioral health interventions
• Re-examining the impact of the District's medical malpractice laws and how they may harm medical care.
• Invest in local medical education and how to retain students from local medical schools and allied health schools