As COVID-19 began surging across the globe in the early months of 2020, it almost immediately flooded health care providers with challenges and demands the industry had never before seen. Suddenly doctors’ offices were closed to patients, hospital emergency departments and ICUs were running out of beds, and healthcare workers were battling a new and unknown disease. Today, in the waning months of 2021, some of these pressures have eased, while others keep coming back along with the Delta variant. Either way, the insights they produced remain vitally important. Lessons learned during this stressful time have already inspired fundamental changes in healthcare—changes that are here to stay.
