If necessity is the mother of invention, crisis is the father of business innovation. We have seen time and again how a world plunged into crisis emerges on the backs of entrepreneurs who find new and better ways to do things. Emerging from the coronavirus crisis will be no different. We are already seeing the first hints of it now.
In light of that, the healthcare sector should start getting ready now for some new medical jobs that will be borne out of the coronavirus emergency. We don’t know what all of those jobs will be, but there’s no doubt that they will emerge. We need only look at recent history to see how this works.
Introducing the On-Demand Economy
The last fundamental crisis this country went through was the financial crisis that began in 2008. Known as the Great Recession, it was a time of significant economic contraction. Unemployment hit double digits, businesses closed, and people found themselves underwater on their mortgages. The bottom of the housing market fell out in a big way.
What emerged as a result? Only the on-demand economy. A number of entrepreneurs, knowing their chances of getting back to work quickly were slim, took it upon themselves to come up with new services they were willing to bet people would pay for.
Out of the financial crisis emerged companies like Uber, Groupon, and Airbnb. Their successes inspired even more entrepreneurs to take chances. We now have an entirely self-sufficient on-demand economy that shows no signs of slowing down. Could healthcare emerge from COVID-19 the same way?
On-Demand Medicine
Let us stick with the on-demand concept for now. On-demand medicine was birthed a few years ago by a couple of app-based companies that began offering phone-based doctor visits for primary care needs. Those companies did all right, but they certainly didn’t explode. That is about to change.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and state lockdowns, people who want to see their GPs just cannot get to the office. Those who would otherwise go to the ER for primary care cannot do so either. Enter the on-demand doctor who will see you via a smartphone app.
The current environment is ripe for an explosion of on-demand primary care. If things take off as common sense dictates they should, it would be no surprise to see primary care doctors leaving the traditional patient care setting to provide on-demand service.
More Telehealth Specialists
Beyond the on-demand paradigm is the general concept of telehealth. Telehealth is not all that new, either. The technology has been around for more than a decade. And even before that, doctors were visiting with their patients via telephone as early as the 1920s.
The difference now is that COVID-19 has forced clinicians to embrace telehealth out of necessity. Now that they have first-hand experience using it, do not just assume they will all abandon it once the pandemic is over. It’s a safe bet that a fair number of clinicians will seek to keep using telehealth moving forward.
This post has offered just a few examples of new medical jobs we might see popping up on sites like Health Jobs Nationwide in the coming months. The thing is that no one really knows what all the new jobs will look like. But we can say that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to rethink how healthcare services are delivered.
That rethink is likely to lead to all sorts of innovations we haven’t even thought of yet. In turn, those innovations are going to lead to new kinds of medical jobs.
