Running the Healthcare Gauntlet: Lost, Found, and Laughing All the Way to Value-Based Care

Part III: The COVID Ultra That Stretched Beyond Hospital Walls

From the chaos of changing rules to the resilience that kept healthcare moving.

Picture yourself arriving for a 10k you barely trained for, only to discover it’s actually an ultramarathon with creek crossings, too much elevation, in the dark, and, oh, the aid stations ran out of snacks hours ago. Welcome to healthcare during COVID: a trail that’s been neglected for decades and no one sent out a “pre-race” email.

Race officials stopped tracking splits, and the progression towards Value-Based Care (VBC). Survival overshadowed VBC. Readmission rates were replaced with concerns for capacity, staffing, PPE shortages, and keeping patients alive. Even some mandatory reporting for quality programs were paused.

Suddenly, runners who had finally found their steady pace with VBC "rules of racing" were told to sprint, indefinitely. Aid stations were covered with struggling participants, volunteers gone, and those little cups of caffeine? They were replaced with lukewarm water, if you were lucky. Everyone was exhausted, yet the trail never stopped climbing.

Rules changed faster than you could lace up your running shoes. Mask? No mask? Double mask? N95s stored in brown paper bags for reuse, if you could even find one. Telehealth went from an occasional checkpoint to the standard of care, like switching from a scenic trail run to plummeting downhill like never before.

But the real obstacles weren’t just physical, there were emotional switchbacks that made you wish for a nap instead of a finish line. Burnout didn’t casually stroll onto the course; it was sending runners off with injuries, or rerouting them to unfamiliar parts of the trail, leaving their teams behind. Healthcare workers weren’t just tired, they were depleted. Every shift felt like mile 25 of a marathon with legs trembling and lungs burning, but somehow, you kept going because stopping wasn’t an option.

And misinformation? It was like running with someone constantly yelling, “You’re going the wrong way!” or insisting the race didn’t even need to happen. This noise spread quicker than any virus, undermining trust in the people who were running themselves ragged to save lives. Instead of support, some frontline workers were treated with hostility that cut deeper than any blister.

Inside hospitals, the “no visitors” rule left rooms eerily quiet. Families couldn’t be there, so nurses became stand-in daughters, sons, pastors, and friends, holding up iPads for final goodbyes. For staff, it was like running while carrying someone else’s backpack in addition to your own. For communities, the lack of connection rippled beyond hospital walls with empty pews, closed schools, and boarded up businesses.

Teams leaned on each other like relay partners, passing the baton for shifts, sharing what little energy was left, and learning to laugh because, sometimes that’s all you can do to survive. The finish line never appeared, but sticking with the race was the only option.

The pandemic didn’t just test endurance; it completely redefined it. Burnout became an injury every runner knew was coming, misinformation was handed out instead of water cups, and grief kept piling up as the elevation continued to climb.

Yet, even in chaos, we were reminded of healthcare’s core truth: it was never about medals or leaderboards. It was about showing up, again and again, for people who needed you.

So, here’s the big question: five years later, did we learn from the toughest stretch of the race? Did the teamwork and grit of the COVID ultra help mark a better course ahead and push us towards real value by exposing the cracks? Or once the crisis faded, did we casually fall back into chasing the scoreboard while ignoring the runners begging for a break because their blisters still hurt and burnout is still a nagging injury?

Part IV continues as healthcare now has fewer runners, shorter tempers, and less patience from the sidelines. Voices that once called out for help now second-guess every checkpoint.

~Alissa Blevins

Rise & Shine You