Category Archives: Infectious Virus

Another week on the exponential curve

Posted on by • Posted in Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership, Pandemic, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

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As efforts to increase testing for COVID-19 ramped up this week, the number of cases in the US rose exponentially, and the number of deaths increased sharply as well. Early but incomplete data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicated that the virus was impacting younger people in greater numbers than had been seen in China and Italy, and concerns grew that asymptomatic but infected people could be spreading the virus to those with compromised health status. In response, many cities and states moved aggressively to put in place stricter measures to keep people in their homes to mitigate spread.

Several flashpoints have emerged across the healthcare system. Supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) are in short supply, raising concerns about putting healthcare workers at risk. Testing supplies—particularly collection swabs—are also running low in many places, forcing some newly-launched testing locations to close after just a few days. Hospitals across the country began to gear up for a wave of patients, with the number of potential cases likely to far exceed existing capacity of hospital beds, intensive care beds, and, in particular, ventilators.

In response, the President invoked the Defense Production Act, which will allow the government to direct private sector production of critically needed equipment. Hospital leaders have been advised by the government to cancel elective surgeries and minimize non-emergency utilization of healthcare resources, to preserve supplies and capacity for the coming wave of cases.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) loosened several key regulations to allow more care to be delivered virtually, in an attempt to relieve pressure on the system (more on that below). By week’s end, hospitals in several areas—including Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and New Orleans—were reporting that they were perilously close to being overwhelmed.

As many have pointed out, we are faced with a decision of which curve we want to be on: one that looks like Italy, which responded late with mitigation and suppression efforts and has found their healthcare system collapsing under the volume of hospitalizations; or one that looks like South Korea, where aggressive measures to suppress spread, including extensive testing, strict social distancing, and isolation of infected people, seem to have “flattened the curve”.

The next two weeks will be critical in determining what the next year looks like in America.

 

 

 

“We’re looking at a tsunami”

Posted on by • Posted in Childcare, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Cybersecurity, Health System, Healthcare Providers, Home Care, Home Health, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Intensive Care (ICU), Leadership, Nurses, Paid Time Off (PTO), Pandemic, Talent Management • Leave a comment

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Yesterday we spoke with a senior healthcare executive leading the COVID-19 response for a regional health system on the West Coast. Their area is now experiencing exponential growth of new cases, with the number of local diagnoses doubling every couple of days. In all likelihood, they’re less than two weeks from having the number of cases seen in harder-hit areas like San Francisco, Seattle and New York City. She said the “anticipation of what is about to happen” is the scariest part of the around-the-clock work they are doing to prepare.

But that two-week lead time has given them precious time to organize, and she generously shared key elements of their action plan. Their preparation work—surely similar to what hundreds of health systems around the country are doing—impressed us not only with its breadth, depth and comprehensiveness, but also the level of energy and confidence conveyed by the hundreds of actions and decisions, large and small, the system is making every day. Here are some of their important learnings so far:

  1. Even though the surge of patients has yet to begin, staff are “worried and scared”. They are concerned about PPE shortages and personal safety and stressed at home with schools and daycare closed. Detailed and regular communication is more critical than ever—and they’re trying to answer every inbound concern or question from associates directly. They are funding and expanding childcare options for staff, through partnerships with community organizations and daily stipends for home-based care.
  2. As the system works through worst-case scenario planning, they anticipate the need for critical care nurses, respiratory therapists, and emergency physicians will be the worst bottlenecks, and they are working to cross-train adjacent clinicians and build new staffing models to increase capacity. While most providers are deeply dedicated to providing care for COVID-19 patients, a small number have already “called off” and refused to report—creating unanticipated questions around how to manage these difficult situations.
  1. As they prepare to implement new surge staffing models, the system is now navigating through a period of downtime. With elective procedures cancelled and some ambulatory sites closed, they currently need fewer nurses and clinical staff than a month ago, and are creating policies, like allowing staff to go negative into PTO, to maintain income while they wait for the surge. Staff who must work in-person are working variable shifts to reduce crowding. They are also working to credential nurses and staff furloughed from local ambulatory surgery centers, so they have them ready to deploy when needed.
  1. IT staff are working nonstop to quickly make it possible for all eligible employees to work remotely, and to enable staff to safely gain access to the system’s intranet while guarding against new cybersecurity threats. The system is training and enabling hundreds of doctors to deliver care virtually, including affiliated independents.
  1. Guidelines for coronavirus patient management and recommended PPE practices change daily; it’s a full-time job for clinical leaders to keep up. Doctors are eager to try novel and creative treatments for very sick patients. (For instance, one doctor is developing a 3-D printed device that will allow one ventilator to be used for four patients simultaneously.) This eagerness to “do something” is understandable but creates a bit of chaos as leaders work to create policies around how to best manage patients.
  1. While leaders communicate with other health systems and local and state authorities daily, the vast majority of decisions are made internally, on the fly. For instance, the system is connecting with now-empty local hotels and universities to provide options for low-acuity patient capacity, but leaders hope that parallel efforts at other organizations can be brought together into a more unified regional response. For now, however, coordination would likely create unacceptable delays.
  1. Long-term health and stamina of staff is top among the system’s concerns. “If I borrow worry from the future”, this leader said, “I am worried that we are facing years-long trauma, both emotional and financial, and I’m not sure how we will sort it out”. For now, efforts to support staff and provide moments of relief and joy, are critical, and very appreciated by front-line team members.

We left this conversation emotionally overwhelmed ourselves, and with a huge sense of gratitude for clinicians and health system leaders. Americans can take comfort in the amount of work that is taking place even before critical patients begin to appear—and that doctors, nurses and hospitals are truly dedicated to providing us the best possible care under circumstances they have never faced before. If you know about creative approaches or new ideas organizations are putting in place to contend with the current situation, please let us know. We’re eager to share great ideas!

 

 

 

How the coronavirus pandemic differs from the flu

Posted on by • Posted in Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Health Policy, Incubation Period, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Influenza, Mortality, Pandemic, Vaccine, World Health Organization (WHO) • Leave a comment

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Image result for axios How the coronavirus pandemic differs from the flu

The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a virus humans haven’t encountered before — meaning our bodies have no built-in immunity to it and researchers are frantically working to learn more about it.

Why it matters: While there are important lessons to be learned from other pandemic flus and even seasonal flu outbreaks, the coronavirus pandemic is new and not exactly comparable, making predictions, policies and treatments all the more difficult.

The latest: The coronavirus is spreading throughout the U.S., with at least 35,224 confirmed cases and 471 deaths early Monday morning, per Johns Hopkins’ Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

  • Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the 2019-2020 seasonal flu has caused at least 38 million illnesses, 390,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths so far this season.

What they’re saying: Anthony Fauci, who’s served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, told a JAMA podcast he’s worked on multiple infectious disease crises “but nothing of the magnitude of this.”

  • One of the problems, he said, is that without strong containment and mitigation efforts, it hits society and its health care system “all of a sudden — boom! It starts to skyrocket.”
  • The World Health Organization on Friday warned against dismissing the coronavirus as just a bad outbreak of the flu, saying overwhelmed health systems are “collapsing” around the world.
  • “This is not normal. This isn’t just a bad flu season,” WHO’s Mike Ryan said.

While both seasonal flu and COVID-19 cause similar respiratory illnesses, there are key differences between the viruses.

  • Influenza has an incubation period of roughly 2-3 days, whereas the coronavirus incubates longer (5-6 days on average) before symptoms appear, possibly allowing more people to unknowingly spread the virus.
  • On average, 1.3 people catch the flu from an infected person versus 2-3 for the coronavirus.
  • There’s a flu vaccine and multiple effective treatments, so many exposed to the flu will have lessened symptoms. There’s no vaccine or treatment yet approved for COVID-19.
  • Children appear to be more susceptible to severe complications from this seasonal flu than from COVID-19, with the CDC reporting the highest number of influenza-associated deaths (149) at this point in the season, with the exception of the 2009 flu pandemic.
  • But, the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is between 10 and 40 times higher than the average 0.1% mortality rate for the seasonal flu.

The U.S. can learn from both Asia and Europe, which experienced cases of COVID-19 earlier than the U.S., Julie Fischer of Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security tells Axios.

  • China is providing data showing what measures are working better than others, and is conducting treatment tests on patients, which will be valuable, she said.
  • In South Korea, robust diagnostic testing using creative measures like drive-thrus combined with strong health care followup shows the importance of isolating the right people early enough to limit the spread, Fischer says.
  • Italy tried to do a widespread but unfocused social distancing. There’s been some success in stemming the outbreak in certain areas that tested a large number of people, tracing and quarantining those who have been in contact with positive cases. But, it wasn’t early enough or sufficiently extensive, and many parts of Italy are now overwhelmed.

Longer term lessons can be drawn from prior pandemics, like the Spanish flu of 1918, Fischer says.

  • Comparing Philadelphia’s response with that of St. Louis is quite striking, Fischer says. Philadelphia decided to hold a 200,000-person parade to boost morale — but this led to widespread infections. In contrast, St. Louis rapidly battened down the hatches and reported a smaller epidemic.
  • Another lesson from the Spanish flu was that closing schools early on was “one of the most beneficial” non-pharmaceutical interventions.

The bottom line: “This is not an ‘abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ scenario,” Fischer says. “We can focus our strategy and become much more aggressive” in diagnostics testing and social distancing measures until scientists make advancements on vaccines and treatments.

 

 

COVID-19 threatens to overwhelm hospitals. They’re weighing how best to ration care.

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Health Policy, Health System, Healthcare Ethics, Healthcare Providers, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Medical Ethics, Mortality, Pandemic, Rationing Care, Ventilators • 2 Comments

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The coronavirus outbreak is forcing the U.S., a nation largely unaccustomed to scarcity, to have tough conversations about how to allocate limited medical resources as hospitals warn its only a matter of time before they’re inundated with COVID-19 patients.

Across the country, hospital officials are discussing ethical dilemmas and attempting to draft policies about rationing care when patients needing ventilators and other resources dwarf the supply, several hospital ethicists told Healthcare Dive. In addition to issues of mortality, questions also are being raised about whether medical workers can opt out of treating patients with COVID-19, particularly if they don’t have the right personal protective equipment.

“They are having these conversations at the policy level,” Kelly Dineen, director of the health law program at Creighton University and a member of COVID-19 Ethics Advisory Committee at the University of Nebraska Medical Center​, told Healthcare Dive.

Ethical dilemmas are usually tackled by a hospital’s ethics committee, which, in an ideal scenario, encompasses a variety of workers from across the hospital, including clinicians, ethicists and social workers. 

No federal mandate exists requiring hospitals to have such committees. However, many do to meet accreditation standards that require facilities to have some sort of mechanism for ethics conflicts and decision making. Many choose to meet that standard by having an ethics committee, though not all do, according to one expert.

Hospitals are at risk of not having the capacity to care for a surge of COVID-19 patients if an outbreak similar to Wuhan or Italy occurs here. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pleaded with the federal government to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to build back-up facilities as the COVID-19 rapidly spreads through areas of the hard-hit state. Similarly, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested a Navy hospital ship and two mobile hospitals to address a surge in patients.

Federal officials are urging Americans to do their part by retreating to their homes to socially distance themselves from others in an effort to hamper the disease’s reach. CMS also last week urged hospitals to put off non-essential elective surgeries to prepare for an onslaught of cases. Years of culling hospital beds in a shift to outpatient care has the nation’s facilities short of meeting expected demand under some prediction models.

The concern about scarce resources is not unfounded. Italy’s healthcare system has been pushed to the brink and many see parallels in terms of the trajectory of the spread. Overwhelmed with sick patients, Italy’s society of anesthesiology and intensive care published recommendations on how to prioritize patients and not just serve the first in the door.

China, the first country to report cases of the disease, feverishly began building hospitals to meet demand.

And the U.S. has far fewer hospital beds per 1,000 residents than China or Italy.

It’s important facilities across the country start having conversations about allocating resources now before clinicians are pushed to their limits, ethicists said.

“Any time you have that kind of pressure and load … it’s going to be hard to also be thinking about all of the ethical implications and what that means in a way that might otherwise not be so hard,” Dineen said.

The struggle will be effectively communicating those policies throughout a system or hospital, Erica Salter, associate professor and program director of the doctorate program for healthcare ethics at St. Louis University, told Healthcare Dive.

“It’s wise to anticipate failures of communication and protect against those,” Salter said.

Ultimately, those policies will vary by institution, though ethicists said it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive. And hospitals should also be prepared to be held to account for decisions that are made, Dineen said.

Patients and their loved ones will want to know there was a process and that it was fair, not arbitrary. 

“There’s no reason we can’t be prepared with a process, even if we don’t necessarily have a better answer,” she said.

Still, despite the most well-intentioned plans it will always be the doctor’s call, Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine, told Healthcare Dive.  

“You’re going to see variation in what is decided floor to floor, doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital,” Caplan said.

Still, some hospitals are hesitant to issue overly broad guidance because of the liabilities that might come later. However, depending on the state, emergency orders issued during a pandemic may help shield providers or systems from liability as standard of care decisions were made during a unique situation.

And, though Americans may struggle to talk about the end of life and mortality, the medical profession is used to tough conversations about scarce resources.

For example, when dialysis machines were first developed, the technology was not widely available for everyone with end-stage kidney failure. A decision had to be made about which patients were granted access to the lifesaving treatment and which ones were not. It’s a conversation that continues today for those needing transplants.

“The principles guiding these decisions are not new,” Salter said. “We’ve been dealing with issues of scarce resources for many decades.”

 

 

 

 

Hospital leaders plead for financial help, warn of closures, missing payroll

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Hospital executives from across the country sounded the alarm Saturday about the dire need for federal financial aid as their cash on hand continues to erode amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ll exhaust all avenues to make payroll in the next few weeks,” Scott Graham, CEO of Three Rivers and North Valley Hospitals in rural Washington said of Three Rivers during a call with reporters Saturday morning.

The American Hospital Association is urging lawmakers on Capitol Hill to consider deploying at least $100 billion to aid hospitals fight against the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The relief package would fund medical personnel, supplies and infrastructure, and expenses related to COVID-19, Rick Pollack, CEO of AHA, told reporters.

Without a relief package, Pollack warned it “could mean that many hospitals won’t survive.” The pleas came as Congress debates a stimulus package this weekend.

American life has ground to halt as experts urge the public to distance themselves from others in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. Many states closed bars and restaurants with virtually all group events canceled. Likewise, hospitals have been asked — or required in some locales — to halt all elective procedures to free up resources for an expected surge of patients.

But hospitals rely on those typically lucrative procedures to drive revenue. Some hospitals are starting to wonder how they’ll keep the lights on after facing the reality of canceled procedures and the need to increase staff and supplies to combat the pathogen.

On top of that, hospitals are unable to get much needed supplies as some vendors are requiring payment on delivery, funds they do not have.

There is no time to waste, hospital leaders warned, citing less than two weeks cash on hand.

“We need to get this done now,” Pollack said of an emergency funding package from the federal government.

Despite the dire financial strain, hospitals are still preparing to increase capacity to meet a surge in demand. It’s unclear whether they will be reimbursed for all expenses related to increasing the amount of beds, capacity and supplies.

Some areas were already facing a shortage of nurses and physicians before the outbreak and anticipate that to become worse.

“In spite of our existing financial challenges, we are planning to increase capacity because that is what we must do,” LaRay Brown, CEO of One Brooklyn Health System in New York, said Saturday. One Brooklyn​ operates three hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers in New York, serving about 2 million.

Brown said all hospitals in New York were asked Friday by state health officials to submit plans for the upping of capacity by 50% of existing bed count.

Brown anticipates receiving some support from the state of New York but seemed wary of the state’s future financial footing as it battles the pathogen as well, and with a weakened tax base as businesses have shuttered.

“This is why I’m on this call,” Brown said. “We need immediate cash relief from the federal government.”

 

 

 

To solve the economic crisis, we will have to solve the health-care crisis

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Research, Clinical Research Funding, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Demand Shock, Health Policy, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership, Pandemic, Pharmaceutical Industry, Public Health, Public Safety, Supply Shock, Vaccine • Leave a comment

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In Washington, the focus has now turned to the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic, with experts and politicians proposing their preferred policy tools — ranging from tax cuts to corporate bailouts to direct payments of cash. Each is worth debating, but the focus is misplaced. This is not an economic crisis; it is a health-care crisis.

The distinction may sound academic. But understanding it is actually vital to designing the policies that should follow.

In an economic crisis, you could imagine a situation in which people lose their jobs and are unable to spend money. That’s called a demand shock, which is what happened during the global financial crisis of 2008. Or producers could raise prices (for various reasons), making it harder to buy their goods. That’s a supply shock, and it describes the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. But what is happening now cannot be addressed primarily by economic responses, because we are witnessing the suspension of economics itself.

Today, even if you have money, increasingly you cannot go into a shop, restaurant, theater, sports arena or mall because those places are closed. If you own a factory that hasn’t already closed for health reasons, you may still have to shut it down because you can’t get key components from suppliers or you can’t find enough stores open to sell your goods.

In these conditions, cash to consumers cannot jump-start consumption. Relief to producers will not jump-start production. This problem is on a level different and far greater than the recession of 2008 or the aftermath of 9/11. If it were to go on for months, it could look worse than the Great Depression.

This is not an argument against any of the economic measures being proposed. People need to be able to eat, buy medicine and pay their bills. New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin has canvassed experts and concluded that the best approach would be a zero-interest “bridge loan” to all businesses and self-employed people as long as they keep most of their workers on staff. It is probably the right course of action, massively expensive but cheaper than a full-blown Great Depression.

But even that might not work if we do not recognize that first and foremost the United States faces a health crisis. And that crisis is not being solved. China is now reporting no new domestic infections. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have also made progress in “flattening the curve” — the phrase of the year — because they have prioritized dealing with the health-care crisis over enacting a grand economic stimulus.

The United States is still dangerously behind the curve. A headline in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal is, “Coronavirus Testing Chaos Across America.” The article details how the country still has “a chaotic patchwork of testing sites,” with testing proceeding “far slower than experts say is necessary, in part due to a slow federal response.” The U.S. testing rate remains shockingly low, well behind the rates of most other rich countries and far behind those of the Asian countries that are handling this crisis best. Across the United States, hospitals are warning of a dire shortage of beds, medical equipment and supplies. And the worst is yet to come. With infections doubling every two to three days, the U.S. health-care system will face what New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo correctly described as a “tsunami.”

The Trump administration is still acting slowly and fitfully. Experts predicted weeks ago that cities would need thousands more hospital beds, and yet the Navy is still performing maintenance on two hospital ships and figuring out staffing. The president says he will invoke “defense production” powers only if necessary. What is he waiting for? He should direct firms to start production of all key medical equipment in short supply. The armed forces should be deployed immediately to set up field testing and hospital sites. Hotels and convention centers should be turned into hospitals. The federal government should announce a Manhattan Project-style public-private partnership to find and produce a vaccine. After decades of attacks on government, federal agencies are understaffed, underfunded and ill-equipped to handle a crisis of this magnitude. They need help, and fast.

And here’s another idea: President Trump could forge an international effort to unite the world against this common threat. If the United States, China and the European Union worked together, prospects for success — on a vaccine, for example — would be greater. China in particular produces most of the supplies and medical ingredients the world needs. Trump should remove all of his self-defeating tariffs so that American consumers don’t have to pay more for these goods and China can ramp up production. This is a war, and in a war you try to find allies rather than create enemies.