Paying the Price for a Broken Healthcare System: Rethinking Employment, Labor, and Work in a Post-Pandemic World

Abstract

Even before the word pandemic reentered the lexicon, pressures stemming from institutional and technological change challenged policymakers and provider organizations to rethink core features of the manner in which we deliver healthcare. This essay introduces a special issue devoted to the consequences of change on the healthcare sector’s varied stakeholders. It does so in the context of our eventual, post-coronavirus reemergence and a renewed interest in remaking the healthcare system in light of its obvious deficiencies. Towards that end, we introduce the five papers composing this special issue, each of which informs the ways that change actually transpires in healthcare organizations and systems.

Keywords: healthcare, organizations, labor relations, professions, organizational behavior, technological change, COVID-19, unions