CLEVELAND — While medical staff continue to cope with COVID-19 numbers, health care centers, such as Cleveland Clinic, are focusing on the future of medicine and how the pandemic has forever changed the way patients are being treated. 

What You Need To Know

  • Cleveland Clinic and other hospitals are focusing on the future of medicine and how the pandemic has forever changed the way doctors treat patients

  • The CDC reports COVID-19 is currently the third-leading cause of death in the Buckeye State, right behind heart disease and cancer

  • While the number of staff members may be shrinking, another tool in the disposal is telehealth

“The pandemic really has tested us, as health care providers, to our limits,” said Dr. Raed Dweik, chair of Cleveland Clinic's Respiratory Institute. “Nurses are leaving. Respiratory therapists are leaving, even physicians.”

Dr. Dweik said dealing with the decline in staff has been a challenging ordeal for doctors, especially given the number of COVID-19 deaths, which has surpassed one million in the United States.

“A million deaths is just a sobering number, you know. It’s huge,” Dweik said.

COVID-19 is now deadlier than diabetes, Alzheimer’s and stroke in Ohio, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reports COVID-19 is currently the third-leading cause of death in the Buckeye State, right behind heart disease and cancer.

“The good news is that since the last variant, delta, that was really severe, causing hospitalizations and a lot of ICU admissions, people have not been getting very sick,” said Dweik, as he addressed the recent rise in omicron cases. “Our hospitals are not full with COVID. Our ICU use, for example, here at the main campus, we have like anywhere from one to three patients a day in the ICU."

It’s a positive sign given the continued exodus throughout health care.

“There’s a shortage in health care workers now, and that’s going to affect us beyond the pandemic,” said Dweik.

The number of staff members leaving might be on the rise, but something that's not going anywhere is telehealth.

“Telehealth now has expanded in many ways: Routine appointments, emergency appointments and I think the convenience of it is amazing,” he said.

Dweik said it is also amazing how medical staff at Cleveland Clinic and at hospitals across the country manage to keep it all together.

“How we take care of each other, realizing that health care (can) be very taxing sometimes, I think how we take care of each other as a team hopefully will stay with us for the long haul,” he said.