“In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in the U.S. and our hospital system decided to stop all elective surgery. I was energized for the future challenge, but didn’t exactly know what would lay ahead. I wear some administrative hats in my hospital system so I knew there would be some type of redeployment. I was immediately asked to help define a surge response with other local leaders for my home hospital in our southern California system. This collaborative work was inspirational as we were mapping the movement of hundreds of regional physicians to meet any possible surge scenario. We were also designing the regional Orthopaedic response and “Lean In” during this time across all southern California for 13 hospitals over 50,000 square miles to account for increased Ortho responsibility in supporting our primary care, hospitalist and intensivist colleagues. I am so proud of the individual 13 Orthopaedic chiefs I work collaboratively with to manage musculoskeletal care for over 4.7 million patients we serve. We pivoted to virtual care rapidly as others have modelled so well. We are now helping to lead efforts across all surgical service lines Chiefs in our system and are implementing innovative surgical backlog reduction efforts and seeing new thinking emerge as a result of this unprecedented time. We are also sprinting to devise the next paradigm for healthcare delivery with Value as our north star, while leveraging technology to solve for condition-based problems. We truly believe some form of these models of care will be “what’s next” to get patients to the right care expediently. It’s strange to be bullish during this otherwise difficult period and I am grateful for my family as they give me the grace to help imagine a better future in such a tough present.”
–Ronald Navarro, MD, FAAOS