URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2020_Melissa-McCarthy

“We have taken giant steps forward in virtual care.” - Betty Rambur

Betty Rambur Professor Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice Nursing

LESSONS LEARNED 1. Telehealth visits have permanently transformed health care delivery, offering increased access to care. The AHC faculty will explore this expansion with a focus on assuring quality and preventing fraudulent use. 2. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed gaps and disparities in our health system. Research and education at URI across the colleges of Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences will offer important new approaches to assuring improved health care access for the entire population. 3. The way we pay for health care should increasingly focus on improved lifelong well-being, including preventing and managing chronic diseases. approaches, to manage care more proactively,” Rambur noted. “This is a real opportunity, and this has not traditionally been part of the education for nurses. It’s important to incorporate the innovations that are now available and soon will be routine.”

improve the health of the population.” Roberts said many angles exist from which to approach COVID-19 regarding how the virus affects different people based on their health, history, or genetics. Certain chronic diseases, such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, and chronic kidney disease are highly linked to COVID-19 death and allow for reconsideration of preventative care and team-based health delivery. “I think we’ll have an enhanced focus on disparities across racial and ethnic groups and the determinants of health that are connected to those disparate outcomes,” Roberts said. “We have some people at URI who are already teaching and researching on these important issues.” The change in health care and new research will further affect and change the way the University approaches educating future health care workers. “There are so many layers,” Roberts said. “To me most exciting is looking forward. Universities have a unique role to play because they are not providers of care, but they teach those who build our health care responsiveness, and they can fundamentally change and improve what happens. “It is an exciting thing to think about, working across the colleges here at URI, to be revising our systems of care,” Professor Rambur said. “Those systems can have greater accountability for both improved outcomes and lower cost.” Additionally, new technology and an ever-expanding world of research will provide many different learning experiences for the students at URI. “We are in an era of opportunities related to things like artificial intelligence, and the use of sophisticated data mining

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