Rapid Changes to Health System Spurred by COVID Might Be Here to Stay

Shifts toward Telehealth, fee-for-patient, and hospital closures are among trends being accelerated by the pandemic

COVID-19 has pushed aside issues like state-by-state licensing and billing rates that had slowed the adoption of telehealth services. Miriam Doerr Martin Frommherz/Shutterstock

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced sudden major changes to the nation’s health care system that are unlikely to be reversed.

“Health care is never going back to the way it was before,” said Gail Wilensky, a health economist who ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs for President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s.