John Adlesich or the ascent of a public health executive professional about healthcare industry trends in 2021: Think outside your ZIP code. With the emergence of virtual services and virtual workforces, the talent pool is expanding and new entrants are emerging that can offer services at a lower cost and often at a higher quality than is possible for some organizations. One example is the collaboration between tele-ICU service providers and small, rural hospitals to improve their patients’ access to highly specialized critical care. Organizations also have increased flexibility to find personnel in clinical areas, such as subspecialty radiologists, and to cover nonclinical areas where it’s difficult to recruit talent, such as revenue cycle specialists, IT staff and customer service representatives.

John Adlesich on behavior therapy in 2021: The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) indicates that Applied Behavioral Analysis techniques: Are effective for eliminating challenging behaviors such as stereotypies, hitting, biting or self-harm Can promote socially significant behaviors like reading, communication, engaging in eye contact, and social interaction Must be developed by a professional trained and certified by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB), but can be carried out by other, non-certified technicians under the professional’s supervision Are time consuming and intense – usually implemented 40 or more hours per week, although in brief time spans Provide one-to-one interaction and learning, which is thought to be a highly effective component of the therapy Can be utilized by parents and other caregivers cooperatively within the treatment paradigm, although parents may need support and training to utilize effectively.

John Adlesich about healthcare industry trends: COVID-19 tops the Biden administration’s priorities and will likely do so for the foreseeable future. Vaccine distribution will dominate the first six months of 2021, with federal effort focused on the expansion of testing, contact tracing, and better public health reporting from states and localities up to the CDC and other federal agencies. Data collection and expanded use of data will be critical to the Biden administration’s ongoing COVID-19 response. The administration proposes funding to states and localities for their public health response infrastructure (including registries, reporting, surveillance, and dashboards). The administration also plans to expand the availability of platforms that ensure patient data security and to expand data use rights to enable use and disclosure for research and surveillance. These actions will accelerate research on effective clinical interventions and treatment pathways, expand patient monitoring, and help public health reporting and tracking vaccine distribution. John Adlesich currently works as administrator at Marquis Companies. His latest healthcare industry experience includes positions as executive director at Powerback Rehabilitation Lafayette (Genesis Healthcare) between Aug 2020 – Jan 2021, administrator at Mesa Vista of Boulder between Mar 2019 – Aug 2020, chief executive officer at Sedgwick County Memorial Hospital between Jul 2018 – Feb 2019, interim chief operating officer at Toiyabe Indian Health Project between Mar 2018 – Jun 2018.

John Adlesich thinks that 2021 is a defining year for the health industry. History gives us many reasons to doubt predictions. In 1916, Charlie Chaplin famously called the motion pictures “a fad.” In 1932, Albert Einstein said that nuclear power was not possible. In 2008, Steve Ballmer predicted the iPhone would be a flop. As these cases show, smart people may see the facts, but not the environmental factors that can shift the entire landscape. This was particularly true in 2020, a year that redefined “normal” and altered our world in ways we are only beginning to understand. In this environment, the hard job of accurately predicting future trends became that much more difficult. When I look back at my own predictions last year, almost none of them played out as I thought due to the pandemic and the complete upending of the national health care agenda. But now 10 months in, the pandemic’s true impact is starting to be understood. For 2021, job number one for the nation will be moving ahead with the largest mass vaccination program in our history, as well as improving our rapid testing capabilities and therapeutic treatments for COVID-19, in order to build our herd immunity and allow us to safely reopen and repair our badly damaged economy. This backdrop will permeate all our decisions this year, and directional trends will largely be influenced by how quickly we make progress in these areas.