MedPage Today January 27, 2026
Staff contingency planning and greater vaccine investment are badly needed
Every flu season, American healthcare quietly conducts the same test: What happens when the people who deliver care fall ill at the same time that patient volumes tick up?
The answer is sobering. Clinics cancel appointments. Patients spend more time waiting to be seen in the emergency department. Hospital intensive care units — where I work as a critical care physician — scramble to cover shifts. Yet, we persist in seeing clinician illness as a temporary inconvenience, rather than what it really is — a deep crack in a system built on the myth that healthcare workers are infinitely replaceable.
I recently saw this firsthand. My Thanksgiving holiday week in...
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