Notes From The Medical Director

By Yeshvant Navalgund, MD, with the National Bioskills Medical Advisory Board

Why You Should Be Doing Remote Training Now

Article at a Glance
> Physicians will be busier and less free to travel.
> The demand for essential care and elective surgeries will continue.
> The HIPPA Waiver will expire, reinstating data protection requirements.
>Social distancing will continue;
>Unused education budgets can be invested in technology for future outcomes.

If your company is waiting out the current crisis before scheduling more training events, you’re losing valuable time. Smart device companies are already ramping up remote training efforts. You should be too, and here’s why:

The Future is Uncertain: Back to Work is Not Back to Normal

Once the stay-at-home restrictions are lifted and elective surgeries are allowed again, physicians will be busier than ever. Their hospitals won’t want them going away. They’ll have enormous backlogs of surgeries to catch up on. Fast, convenient training options will be more important than ever.

Essential Care Must Continue

During the start of the pandemic, scheduled essential care was put on hold. Increasingly now, hospitals are struggling and physicians are concerned that delayed essential care is causing suffering and in some cases, even death. As hospitals resume scheduled essential care, the need will continue for safe device adoption and surgical training despite continued restrictions on travel and group gatherings.

Investing Your Budget Savings For The Future

If your budget has had a respite from the usual costs of airfare, housing, and meals for attendees of in-person events, you may have some available resources that can be put towards technology. Use (don’t lose) that 2020 budget by investing in a technology that pays dividends for the future in the form of improved physician relations and educational outcomes.

Article at a Glance
> Physicians will be busier and less free to travel.
> The demand for essential care and elective surgeries will continue.
> The HIPPA waiver will expire, reinstating data protection requirements.
>Social distancing may last for another year or more.
>Unused education budgets can be invested in technology for future outcomes.

The HIPAA Waiver Isn’t Forever

There’s a reason these protections were put in place. The need to protect patient information won’t go away and if anything, it will become increasingly important in a post-COVID world. A HIPPA-compliant solution for handling medication education, product and procedural education, and case observations is critical moving forward.

Social Distancing is Here to Stay

Even as travel bans are lifted and small gatherings are added back to work life, the likelihood is high that social distancing will continue even among colleagues and coworkers for quite some time. Hosting smaller in-person training events, or physician-trainer-only events with remote attendees allows you to keep physician relations and product training going when regular events aren’t possible.