Who is John Adlesich and some of his health industry thoughts about healthcare industry trends: 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: All behavioral therapies share the same reward/consequence paradigm for changing behavior and learning new skills, and they may include some overlap in the way that they are implemented. Despite these similarities, however, children may respond more fully to one approach over another for any number of unknown reasons. If your child is not developing as you expect, or if you believe that he or she may benefit from a combined approach, then pursuing additional therapies is an option to consider. Sharing your ideas and working cooperatively with the professionals who provide services for your child is a good way to explore the efficacy and practical application of other treatment approaches.

John Adlesich on healthcare industry trends in 2021: Democratic control in the Senate will also impact healthcare. For example, Washington state Senator Patty Murray will chair the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. She has advocated for a more robust federal response on COVID-19. And Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon, leads the Finance Committee and has pushed for drug pricing reform and drug price negotiation. These appointments and nominations point to a strong emphasis on COVID-19 recovery and vaccine distribution and coordination. For example, Fauci remains as the Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, and there’s now a COVID-19 data director (Shahpar), indicating this administration will emphasize data and reporting. Also evident in these appointments is a Biden administration focus on health equity and healthcare disparities—particularly with Nunez-Smith as the first Equity Task Force Chair for COVID-19. 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 believes that 2021 is an important 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.