The COVID Effect: Making a Case for Uniform Accreditation among Healthcare Leadership

Abstract

The COVID pandemic has revealed much that we as a medical community did not know about a strain of the virus. More revealing, however, is what the COVID pandemic has revealed about the blueprint of our medical community and our society at large. Much was spoken and written in recent months about the failures of leadership at the international and state levels. Interestingly, online medical bulletins have also detailed the financial windfall for for-profit health systems such as HCA [1] as well as the staffing shortages and union challenges in other systems such as Tenet [2]. C-Suite leaders have shuffled from one facility to the next in the face of consolidation and a reset of organizational priorities. What is lacking from much of this debate and discussion, is hard and objective, accountability for the effects of the pandemic on hospital staff. As physicians on the front line of the worst pandemic in a century, doctors are still required to maintain active medical licenses, board certification, high-quality care, as well as an extremely high level of professionalism at work and outside. As a Cardiothoracic Surgeon, I would not perform heart or lung surgery without the necessary surgical equipment or supplies, such as suture, gauze, forceps. Why then during the height of the pandemic were providers forced to re-use masks, hats, and face shields? Why did the use of PAPR respirators require letters of appeal and training after the pandemic had already begun? While the lack of physical beds and ventilators along with poor staffing levels is also contributory, it is management’s lack of empathy and frontline presence which has led to widespread resignations as a result of depressed morale and burnout [3]. This can easily be chalked up to a “Tsunami”-like a phenomenon that nobody could have expected and, thus, nobody was prepared for. However, as a surgeon on call, there is a reasonable expectation that at some point, one will get a phone call for an emergency, and thus, should be prepared. Granted, the frequency of those emergencies will likely affect the desired consistency of the