Lessons of the Pandemic – How the pandemic affects our health care system

While entering the third year of the COVID-19 Pandemic with a toll of more than 5.5 million deaths and enormous socio-economic consequences, we can already look back and draw some lessons from this still ongoing experience.

The current pandemic exposed the fragilities of health care systems around the world. Even in high-income countries, many health systems were overwhelmed and under pressure. In many other developing nations they collapsed or, surprisingly, did not so. Many places could not provide sufficient capacities to treat so many patients at the same time. The situation also brought disadvantages to non-COVID patients, who haven’t received proper treatment for their conditions - at least temporarily. Inequalities in health care services were accentuated as we have seen discrepancies among regions and countries.

The pandemic still poses many challenges to all – researchers, health care workers, physicians, policymakers, and governments. On the other hand, a common effort in research delivered vaccines and treatments in record time. The use of digital health technologies, such as telehealth, was further developed and gained more acceptance in the general population. And very remarkably: data was never delivered at such a rapid pace. Analytic tools became popular, and forecast models were used to orient decision-makers.

Is this going to help shape systems of continuous and close health/healthcare monitoring, taking also into account geographical differences? What can we learn from this pandemic in order to build more resilient and efficient health care systems? What were best practices in different countries that can be applied elsewhere? What lessons can we learn from these findings for other areas of health care beyond the pandemic? How can we better protect vulnerable people? How can we minimize inequalities in health care among regions?

These and many other pressing questions will be addressed in the new collection “Lessons of the Pandemic – How the pandemic affects our health care system” to be published in our journal “Research in Health Services & Regions – Methods, Results, Implementation.”

In this collection, we will feature original articles, including policy analysis, and brief communications like research briefs and commentaries that delve into those themes, ideally connected to regional variation of health care services.

This is an open-ended collection. We very much welcome further submissions for ongoing publication.

For advice on articles categories that we accept, please click here.

The journal is initiated and fully funded by the Central Research Institute for Ambulatory Health Care during its first years. No Article Processing Charges (APC) or fees are applicable.The peer review process for these articles is the same as the peer review process of the journal in general. Final decisions are made by the Editors-in-Chief.