COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruptions to the healthcare sector. Since the pandemic hit, hospitals and providers have had to deal with a surge in very sick, high-intensity patients while also having to shut down a huge portion of their traditional business. As non-urgent visits and procedures were cancelled, overall surgeries and hospital admissions plummeted. The combination of lower patient volumes, cancelled elective procedures, and higher expenses tied to the pandemic have created a financial crunch for hospitals, which are expected to lose $323 billion this year, according to a report from the American Hospital Association.

These drastic developments come at a time when the healthcare industry is already grappling with challenges posed by the digital transformation happening around electronic health record (EHR) implementation, Meaningful Use (MU) standards, HIPAA compliance, and the CMS’s Interoperability and Patient Access rule. The result is a reckoning throughout the country’s healthcare infrastructure, with a need for rapid changes and new thinking.

Everybody might be in the red right now, says RED Team member John Winenger, a veteran healthcare executive. “But how much is going to come back is the big question that everybody’s rapidly trying to assess.”

We spoke to Winenger and Michael Kreitzer, an expert hospital Interim CIO, about the biggest challenges providers and hospitals are facing, where healthcare goes from here, and the moves organizations can make—including bringing in outside help—to get out of the red and back into the black.