COMMENTARY
CRISIS AS AN ENGINE OF CHANGE
MATTHEW SADOF, MD
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel contagious respiratory illness caused by a virus thought to spread mainly between people through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.1 Heeding the CDC advice for social distancing, we health care providers have been forced to look at our daily practice to find new ways to care for our patients without unduly exposing them to infection. As this current health crisis drives innovations to safely and efficiently care for children with medical complexity (CMC), we are compelled to reexamine the way we practice, creating opportunity to gather evidence that can transform care.
Across the country there may be shifts driven by a need to rapidly adapt and evolve to heed the imperative to keep children away from health care settings unless absolutely necessary. A great deal of rapid cycle testing and prototyping of new approaches to old problems has arisen, catalyzed by interim liberalization of telehealth rules by federal or state authorities. This provides an opportunity to pilot new approaches and assess their value and impact.
