Category Archives: Pandemic

Pandemic Proves Why Leaders Must Protect Americans From Junk Insurance Plans

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Consumer Advocacy, Consumer Protection, Coronavirus, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Health Benefits, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Short Term Health Insurance, Skinny Health Plans, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://morningconsult.com/opinions/pandemic-proves-why-leaders-must-protect-americans-from-junk-insurance-plans/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Republicans+Roll+Out+%241+Trillion+Coronavirus+Relief+Plan&utm_campaign=TFT+Newsletter+07272020

Cartoon – Short Term Health Insurance | HENRY KOTULA

The coronavirus pandemic hit the nation hard and fast, infecting Americans from coast to coast, overwhelming health care systems and wreaking havoc on the economy. Those with pre-existing conditions – like diabetes and cardiovascular disease – are more vulnerable to the deadly virus. Americans have higher rates of these chronic conditions than other countries, in part because so many people live without health insurance or have shoddy coverage. This has become increasingly worse over the last four years as underlying health coverage has shrunken for the virus’s hardest hit victims: Black Americans, Native Americans and people of color.

Of the hundreds of thousands of Americans now recovering from COVID-19, many will undoubtedly have new chronic conditions, like lasting lung damage. This will be on top of the pre-existing conditions many who were predisposed to coronavirus already had. Record job losses in the wake of the pandemic have resulted in the loss of employer-sponsored coverage for more than 5 million Americans who are now on the hunt for new, affordable health insurance plans.

This presents the perfect storm for junk insurance plans – short-term limited duration insurance plans – that allow discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, expose consumers to financial risk and provide inadequate coverage. STLDIs are more dangerous now than ever in our new COVID-19 reality. Let’s be clear: These junk insurance plans – touted by the Trump administration and supported through taxpayer dollars – are not the answer. It is time for our leaders to put back the limitations on how long they can be used.

As their name suggests, short-term limited duration plans are meant to be used temporarily to bridge short-term gaps in coverage that arise from a job loss or other extenuating circumstance. However, new federal rules under the Trump administration have allowed the coverage period of STLDI plans to expand from six to 12 months. The administration has also promoted these plans to states as being eligible for federal subsidies, meaning our tax dollars help pay for them. President Donald Trump himself has touted these plans for being more affordable than Obamacare, but that is because they lack the same protections and do not meet minimum essential coverage standards under the law.

That is what makes these plans so dangerous. Though they tend to be less expensive than Affordable Care Act plans, they leave consumers vulnerable to unanticipated out-of-pocket costs by offering bare-bones coverage. Unlike ACA plans, STLDI plans can exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions, do not cover the cost of prescription drugs, have annual or lifetime maximums on covered services, and are not required to cover preventive services like cancer screenings or maternity care.

The lower price tag may lure consumers suffering financially during the pandemic, but they are high risk for those who do not fully understand what they are buying. Without carefully reading the fine print, many may not know before purchasing that STLDI plans are exempt from ACA rules as well as regulations for insurers recently passed in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. We have already seen the pandemic exacerbate existing health inequalities in America, and now these plans expose consumers, especially low-income individuals and those with chronic conditions, to more discrimination and financial ruin.

The Department of Health and Human Services has already acknowledged that these plans fall short. In fact, the government is having to cover the cost of COVID-19 testing for people with STLDI plans, classifying them as “uninsured.” Yet, they will not cover the cost of COVID-19 treatment, meaning those with STLDI plans could face bills in the thousands of dollars, considering the average cost to treat a hospitalized coronavirus patient is $30,000.

Consumers for Quality Care, a coalition of advocates and former policy makers which provides a voice for patients in the health care debate, recently sent a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma asking that they protect consumers from these dangerous plans.

This pandemic has laid bare how dangerously unprepared America’s health care system is for a large-scale public health crisis. People needed high-quality insurance coverage before coronavirus hit, and they will need it long after the pandemic subsides. Let this be a lesson to the Trump administration – it is time to stop backing junk insurance plans and remove them from the open market. If our leaders fail to act, the lives and financial well-being of millions of Americans are at stake.

 

 

 

 

The economy is in deep trouble again. Coronavirus is to blame

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Air Travel, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economy, Economy Reopening, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Recession, Social Distancing, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Vaccine • Leave a comment

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/business/coronavirus-economy-recovery/index.html

The economy is in deep trouble again. Coronavirus is to blame - CNN

Restaurant reservations are waning. The rebound in air travel is leveling off. And foot traffic at stores is dwindling once again. There is mounting evidence that America’s fragile economic recovery is already stalling as the number of coronavirus infections and deaths spike.

Real-time economic indicators bottomed out in May as stay-at-home orders were lifted and many Americans felt safe enough to start visiting shopping centers, restaurants and even airports.
That gave hope, perhaps prematurely, of a rapid V-shaped recovery for the United States from the historic collapse caused by the pandemic.
But there is now a growing sense that the recovery is losing steam as coronavirus infections surge in California, Texas, Florida and other Sun Belt states.
“The premature reopening of the U.S. economy has resulted in an intensification of the pandemic, which is now causing growth in the economy to slow,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM International, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.
The stall of the fragile recovery comes as Congress debates whether the economy needs more stimulus — and if so, how much to provide. The $600 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits expire this month unless lawmakers take action.
Economists say there is nothing to debate: The recovery is faltering.
“Activity is now clearly contracting in COVID hot spots, including the Sun Belt and the West,” Aneta Markowska, chief economist at Jefferies, wrote in a report on Monday.
That is hardly surprising, given that 22 states have either reversed or paused their reopening due to health concerns.

Recovery hopes overdone?

This doesn’t mean the US economy will keep shrinking in the third quarter. Economists are still betting GDP will turn sharply positive after having collapsed by an estimated 34% during the second quarter. But now they worry that the forecasts for blockbuster growth may be overly optimistic.
For instance, S&P Global Economics warned Wednesday that its estimate for a surge in third quarter GDP at an annualized pace of 22.2% is “at risk of weakening” because of the health crisis.
“Although our base case is for a gradual recovery through next year,” S&P economists wrote, “the [recent] surge in COVID-19 and hospitalizations has raised concerns that a more likely scenario is that the COVID-19 recession has not bottomed out.”
The latest real-time economic indicators suggest those concerns are warranted.
More turbulence for air travel: The resurgence of coronavirus infections is derailing the travel industry’s modest recovery. The number of air passengers processed through TSA security lines fell during the week ended July 20, compared with the prior week, according to Bank of America. This metric is down more than 70% from a year ago.
United (UAL) CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC on Wednesday that the airline doesn’t “expect to get anywhere close to normal until there’s a vaccine that’s been widely distributed to a large portion of the population.”
Restaurant trouble: As the CNN Business Recovery Dashboard clearly shows, restaurant reservations on OpenTable have weakened in recent weeks. During March and April, as the pandemic wreaked havoc, reservations were down nearly 100% from a year ago. That figure rebounded to down “only” 50% in mid-June, but has since rolled over and stood at -65% as of Monday.
Foot traffic to Chipotle (CMG) was down 47% during the first week in June, according to Placer.ai, an analytics platform that uses anonymized location data. Traffic improved to down just 30% by the end of June, but has since “stagnated” through mid-July, Placer.ai said.
Retail slowdown: In April, US retail traffic declined by a staggering 98%, according to Cowen. Traffic steadily improved, with June traffic down 57%, but that rebound has stalled. US retail traffic fell 47% from a year ago during the second week of July, Cowen said, a slight deterioration from the first week in July when traffic was down 45%.
Small business shutdowns: As of Sunday, 24.5% of small businesses in the United States were closed, according to Jefferies. That is worse than late June, when only 19% were closed. Jefferies pointed to “particular weakness in COVID hot spots” and noted that small business employment had dropped to levels unseen since the end of May.
Weaker spending: After plunging by as much as 31% year-over-year in early April, purchases on credit cards issued by Synchrony turned positive in late June. However, Synchrony (SYF) said Tuesday that spending during the first two weeks of July was down 2%.
Unemployment website visits: Web traffic to state unemployment portals “leveled off at still-high levels, suggesting labor market momentum has stalled,” Jefferies said. That jibes with official government statistics in the CNN Business Recovery Dashboard that show unemployment claims have tumbled from their spike this spring but remain elevated. In fact, another 1.4 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week — the first increase in weekly claims since late March.
“The spread of the virus since mid-June has clearly had an adverse effect on economic activity,” economists at Bank of America wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. “It is clear that the path of the economic recovery cannot be disentangled from the path of the virus.”

No vaccine, no recovery?

That’s not to say all real-time indicators are negative right now. For instance, Jefferies said one of the last metrics to bottom out, a US job listing index that the bank created with alternative data platform Thinknum, continued to improve even last week.
Still, the New York Federal Reserve’s weekly economic index, which is composed of metrics on the labor market, consumer behavior and goods production, dropped for the first time since hitting the pandemic low point in late April.
All of this raises stakes in the race to develop a vaccine that is effective against Covid-19.
Vaccine hopes, on top of unprecedented easy money from the Federal Reserve, have helped catapult the stock market. The S&P 500 has spiked 46% since the March 23 low and is now positive for the year.
Real progress is being made on the vaccine front, underscored by a $1.95 billion deal announced Wednesday for Pfizer (PFE) to produce millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses for the US government.
Yet healthcare execs remain more cautious than Wall Street. Seventy-three percent of healthcare industry leaders polled by Lazard estimate that a vaccine won’t be widely available until at least the second half of 2021.
“It is becoming quite clear that absent an accessible and widely distributed vaccine,” RSM’s Brusuelas said, “there will be no complete economic recovery.”

 

 

Initial Unemployment Claims Rise For First Time in 16 Weeks; Air Travel, Restaurant Reservations, and Retail Businesses Face Declines and Closures

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Air Travel, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Job, Job Loss, Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Uncertainty, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninformed • Leave a comment

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/economy/coronavirus-unemployment-benefits/index.html

Travel fears at their highest since 9/11 due to coronavirus - Axios

On Thursday, for the first time in 16 weeks, the Department of Labor reported an increase in initial unemployment claims, with 1.4 million Americans filing for the first time during the week of July 20. First-time claims peaked in late March with 6.9 million claims, and have fallen each week since until last week. Continued claims for the week were at 16.2 million, showing a drop in almost 1 million claims from the previous week. As unemployment claims look to be increasing, the additional $600 in weekly unemployment benefits is set to expire on July 31 (CNN).

Additional economic indicators point to uncertainty. Air travel continues to drop as cases surge nationwide, with 70 percent fewer passengers traveling through security lines compared to a year ago. As we have previously reported, airlines including United and American Airlines have prepared for massive job cuts, and companies including Southwest and United have cut flight schedules by as much as 65 percent (WSJ).

Restaurant reservations have also plummeted, dropping an additional 15 percent from mid-June to late July. Retail and small businesses are also taking a hit as cases continue to rise, with more than 24 percent of small businesses in the U.S. closed as of Sunday, down from 19 percent in late June (CNN).

 

 

 

New CDC Report Says Nearly Half of U.S. Population Is at Risk of Contracting Severe COVID-19

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Evidence-Based Care, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Public Health, Public Safety, Social Determinants of Health, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/07/chronic-conditions-put-nearly-half-us-adults-risk-severe-covid-19

Coronavirus Disease 2019 Case Surveillance — United States ...

Chronic conditions put nearly half of US adults at risk for severe COVID-19

About 47% of US adults have an underlying condition strongly tied to severe COVID-19 illness, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found.

The model-based study, published today in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, used self-reported data from the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the US Census.

Researchers analyzed the data for the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease (CKD), and obesity in residents of 3,142 counties in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They defined obesity as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or higher.

They found that prevalence patterns generally followed population distributions, with high numbers in large cities, but that these conditions were more prevalent in rural than in urban areas. Counties with the highest prevalence of these conditions were generally clustered in the Southeast and Appalachia.

Severe COVID-19 disease, requiring hospitalization, intensive care, and mechanical ventilation or leading to death, is most common in people of advanced age and in those who have at least one of the previously mentioned underlying conditions.

A CDC analysis last month of US COVID-19 patient surveillance data from Jan 22 to May 30 showed that those with underlying conditions were hospitalized six times more often, needed intensive care five times more often, and had a death rate 12 times higher than those without these conditions. But the authors of today’s reported noted that the earlier study defined obesity as a BMI of 40 kg/m2 or higher and included some conditions with mixed or limited evidence of a tie to poor coronavirus outcomes.

Prevalence of underlying conditions in rural, urban counties

Median estimated county prevalence of any underlying illness was 47.2% (range, 22.0% to 66.2%). Numbers of people with any underlying condition ranged from 4,300 in rural counties to 301,744 in large cities.

Prevalence of obesity was 35.4% (range, 15.2% to 49.9%), while it was 12.8% for diabetes (range, 6.1% to 25.6%), 8.9% for COPD (range, 3.5% to 19.9%), 8.6% for heart disease (range, 3.5% to 15.1%), and 3.4% for CKD, 3.4% (range, 1.8% to 6.2%).

Nationwide, the overall weighted prevalence of adults with chronic underlying conditions was 30.9% for obesity, 11.4% for diabetes, 6.9% for COPD, 6.8% for heart disease, and 3.1% for CKD.

The estimated median prevalence of any underlying condition generally increased with increasing county remoteness, ranging from 39.4% in large metropolitan counties to 48.8% in rural ones.

Resource allocation, preventive health measures

The authors noted that access to healthcare resources in some rural counties may be poor, adding to the risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes.

“The findings can help local decision-makers identify areas at higher risk for severe COVID-19 illness in their jurisdictions and guide resource allocation and implementation of community mitigation strategies,” they wrote. “These findings also emphasize the importance of prevention efforts to reduce the prevalence of these underlying medical conditions and their risk factors such as smoking, unhealthy diet, and lack of physical activity.”

The researchers called for future studies to include the weighting of the contribution of each underlying illness according to the risk of serious COVID-19 outcomes and identifying and integrating other factors leading to susceptibility to both infection and serious outcomes to better estimate the number of people at increased risk for COVID-19 infection. 

 

 

 

Diabetes highlights two Americas: One where COVID is easily beaten, the other where it’s often devastating

Posted on by • Posted in Access & Quality of Healthcare, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Long-Term Complications, Coronavirus Treatment, Diabetes, Essential Health Benefits, Essential Workers, Evidence-Based Care, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Mortality, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Preexisting Conditions, Primary Care, Social Determinants of Health, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Vulnerable Populations • Leave a comment

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/07/27/diabetes-and-covid-two-americas-health-problems/5445836002/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-07-27%20Healthcare%20Dive%20%5Bissue:28706%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive

What You Need to Know about Diabetes and the Coronavirus | diaTribe

Dr. Anne Peters splits her mostly virtual workweek between a diabetes clinic on the west side of Los Angeles and one on the east side of the sprawling city. 

Three days a week she treats people whose diabetes is well-controlled. They have insurance, so they can afford the newest medications and blood monitoring devices. They can exercise and eat well.  Those generally more affluent West L.A. patients who have gotten COVID-19 have developed mild to moderate symptoms – feeling miserable, she said – but treatable, with close follow-up at home.

“By all rights they should do much worse, and yet most don’t even go to the hospital,” said Peters, director of the USC Clinical Diabetes Programs.

On the other two days of her workweek, it’s a different story.

In East L.A., many patients didn’t have insurance even before the pandemic. Now, with widespread layoffs, even fewer do. They live in “food deserts,” lacking a car or gas money to reach a grocery store stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. They can’t stay home, because they’re essential workers in grocery stores, health care facilities and delivery services. And they live in multi-generational homes, so even if older people stay put, they are likely to be infected by a younger relative who can’t.

They tend to get COVID-19 more often and do worse if they get sick, with more symptoms and a higher likelihood of ending up in the hospital or dying, said Peters, also a member of the leadership council of Beyond Type 1, a diabetes research and advocacy organization. 

“It doesn’t mean my East Side patients are all doomed,” she emphasized.

But it does suggest COVID-19 has an unequal impact, striking people who are poor and already in ill health far harder than healthier, better off people on the other side of town.

Tracey Brown has known that for years.

“What the COVID-19 pandemic has done is shined a very bright light on this existing and pervasive problem,” said Brown, CEO of the American Diabetes Association. Along with about 32 million others – roughly 1 in 10 Americans – Brown has diabetes herself.

“We’re in 2020, and every 5 minutes, someone is losing a limb” to diabetes, she said. “Every 10 minutes, somebody is having kidney failure.”

Americans with diabetes and related health conditions are 12 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those without such conditions, she said. Roughly 90% of Americans who die of COVID-19 have diabetes or other underlying conditions. And people of color are over-represented among the very sick and the dead.

Diabetes and COVID: Coronavirus highlights America's health problems

Diabetes increases COVID risk

The data is clear: People with diabetes are at increased risk of having a bad case of COVID-19, and diabetics with poorly controlled blood sugar are at even higher risk, said Liam Smeeth, dean of the faculty of epidemiology and population health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He and his colleagues combed data on 17 million people in the U.K. to come to their conclusions.

Diabetes often comes paired with other health problems – obesity and high blood pressure, for instance. Add smoking, Smeeth said, and “for someone with diabetes in particular, those can really mount up.”

People with diabetes are more vulnerable to many types infections, Peters said, because their white blood cells don’t work as well when blood sugar levels are high. 

“In a test tube, you can see the infection-fighting cells working less well if the sugars are higher,” she said.

Peters recently saw a patient whose diabetes was triggered by COVID-19, a finding supported by one recent study.

Going into the hospital with any viral illness can trigger a spike in blood sugar, whether someone has diabetes or not. Some medications used to treat serious cases of COVID-19 can “shoot your sugars up,” Peters said.

In patients who catch COVID-19 but aren’t hospitalized, Peters said, she often has to reduce their insulin to compensate for the fact that they aren’t eating as much.

Low income seems to be a risk factor for a bad case of COVID-19, even independent of age, weight, blood pressure and blood sugar levels, Smeeth said. “We see strong links with poverty.”

Some of that is driven by occupational risks, with poorer people unable to work from home or avoid high-risk jobs. Some is related to housing conditions and crowding into apartments to save money. And some, may be related to underlying health conditions.

But the connection, he said, is unmistakable.

Peters recently watched a longtime friend lose her husband. Age 60 and diabetic, he was laid off due to COVID, which cost him his health insurance. He developed a foot ulcer that he couldn’t afford to treat. He ignored it until he couldn’t stand anymore and then went to the hospital.

After surgery, he was released to a rehabilitation facility where he contracted COVID. He was transferred back to the hospital, where he died four days later.

“He died, not because of COVID and not because of diabetes, but because he didn’t have access to health care when he needed it to prevent that whole process from happening,” Peters said, adding that he couldn’t see his family in his final days and died alone. “It just breaks your heart.”

Taking action on diabetes– personally and nationally

Now is a great time to improve diabetes control, Peters added. With many restaurants and most bars closed, people can have more control over what they eat. No commuting leaves more time for exercise.

That’s what David Miller has managed to do. Miller, 65, of Austin, Texas, said he has stepped up his exercise routine, walking for 40 minutes four mornings a week at a nearby high school track. It’s cool enough at that hour, and the track’s not crowded, said Miller, an insurance agent, who has been able to work from home during the pandemic. “That’s more consistent exercise than I’ve ever done.”

His blood sugar is still not where he wants it to be, he said, but his new fitness routine has helped him lose a little weight and bring his blood sugar under better control. Eating less remains a challenge. “I’m one of those middle-aged guys who’s gotten into the habit of eating for two,” he said. “That can be a hard habit to shake.”

Miller said he isn’t too worried about getting COVID-19.

“I’ve tried to limit my exposure within reason,” he said, noting that he wears a mask when he can in public. “I honestly don’t feel particularly more vulnerable than anybody else.”

Smeeth, the British epidemiologist, said even though they’re at higher risk for bad outcomes, people with diabetes should know that they’re not helpless. 

“The traditional public health messages – don’t be overweight, give up smoking, keep active  – are still valid for COVID,” he said. Plus, people with diabetes should prioritize getting a flu vaccine this fall, he said, to avoid compounding their risk.

(For more practical recommendations for those living with diabetes during the pandemic, go to coronavirusdiabetes.org.)

In Los Angeles, Peters said, the county has made access to diabetes medication much easier for people with low incomes. They can now get three months of medication, instead of only one. “We refill everybody’s medicine that we can to make sure people have the tools,” she said, adding that diabetes advocates are also doing what they can to help people get health insurance.

Controlling blood sugar will help everyone, not just those with diabetes, Peters said. Someone hospitalized with uncontrolled blood sugar takes up a bed that could otherwise be used for a COVID-19 patient. 

Brown, of the American Diabetes Association, has been advocating for those measures on a national level, as well as ramping up testing in low-income communities. Right now, most testing centers are in wealthier neighborhoods, she said, and many are drive-thrus, assuming that everyone who needs testing has a car.

Her organization is also lobbying for continuity of health insurance coverage if someone with diabetes loses their job, as well as legislation to remove co-pays for diabetes medication.

“The last thing we want to have happen is that during this economically challenged time, people start rationing or skipping their doses of insulin or other prescription drugs,” Brown said. That leads to unmanaged diabetes and complications like ulcers and amputations. “Diabetes is one of those diseases where you can control it. You shouldn’t have to suffer and you shouldn’t have to die.”

 

 

6 months in: What will the new normal look like for hospitals?

Posted on by • Posted in Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Treatment, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economy Reopening, Elective Procedures, Elective Surgery, Employee Protections, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Financial Pressure, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Agreement, Labor Relations, Labor Strike, Labor Union, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Primary Care, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Supply Chain, Telemedicine, Triage, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Virtual Care Strategy, Virtual Healthcare, Virtual Visit, Worker Protection • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/6-months-in-new-normal-hospitals-covid/581524/

Experts say a sustained state of emergency is likely until there is a cure or vaccine for COVID-19.

The first U.S. hospital to knowingly treat a COVID-19 patient was Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington, on Jan. 20. Since then, every aspect of healthcare has been upended, and it’s becoming increasingly clear all parts of society will have to adapt to a new baseline for the foreseeable future.

For hospitals and doctors’ offices, that means building on a major shift to telemedicine, new workflows to allow for more infection control and revamping the supply chain for pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment and other supplies. That’s on top of ongoing challenges of burned out workers and staff shortages further exacerbated by the pandemic.

Looking out even further, the industry will have to figure out how to treat potential chronic conditions in COVID-19 survivors and, until an effective vaccine is developed, how to manage new outbreaks of the disease.

Experts say U.S. hospitals are generally in a much better position for dealing with COVID-19 now than they were in March, and providers are learning more every week about the best treatments and care practices.

A June survey of healthcare executives conducted by consultancy firm Advis found that 65% of respondents said the industry is prepared for a fall or winter surge, about the inverse of what an earlier survey with that question showed.

“We’ve evolved. We’re in a much better state now than we were in the beginning of the pandemic,” Michael Calderwood, associate chief quality officer at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, told Healthcare Dive. “There’s been a lot of learning.”

But the number of positively identified cases has now topped 4 million, and little political will exists to reinstitute widespread shutdowns even in areas where surges have filled ICUs to capacity. No treatment or vaccine for the disease exists or appears imminent. Testing and contract tracing efforts are too few and remain scattered and uncoordinated.

Whether there is a clear nationwide second wave or smaller surges in various parts of the country at different times, hospitals will need to remain in an effective state of emergency that requires constant vigilance until there is a cure or vaccine.

“Until we’re armed with that, we’re always going to have to be working like this. I don’t see any other way,” Diane Alonso, director of Intermountain Healthcare’s abdominal transplant program, told Healthcare Dive.

The fall will bring additional challenges. Flu season usually begins to ramp up in October, and if the strains in wide circulation this year are severe, that will further stress the health system. While some schools have announced they will be virtual-only for the rest of 2020, others are committed to in-person classes. That could mean increased community spread, especially in college towns. Colder weather that forces people indoors — where the novel coronavirus is far more likely to spread — will also be a complicating factor.

So far, hospitals have been reluctant to once again halt elective procedures, though some have had to, arguing that the care is still necessary and can be done safely when the proper protections are in place. But that doesn’t mean volume will rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

“While we think demand will come back, we’ve seen some flattening on demand in certain aspects that may be the new indicator of the new norm in terms of how people seek care,” Dion Sheidy, a partner and healthcare advisory leader at advisory firm KPMG, told Healthcare Dive.

Accelerating trends to provide care outside hospitals

When the number of COVID-19 cases first surged in the U.S. and stay-at-home orders were implemented nationwide, telehealth became a necessary way for urgent care to continue.

Virtual visits skyrocketed in March and April as CMS and private payers relaxed regulations and expanded coverage. Some of that will be rolled back, but much may persist as patients and providers grow more used to using telehealth and platforms become smoother.

Virtual care can’t replace in-person care, of course, and some patients and doctors will prefer face-to-face visits. The middle- to long-term result is likely to be that telehealth thrives for some specialties like psychiatry, but drops substantially from the highest levels during shutdowns throughout the country.

Other care settings outside of the hospital may see upticks as well, including at-home and retail-based primary and urgent care.

Renee Dua, the CMO of home healthcare and telemedicine startup Heal, said the company has seen virtual visits increase eight fold since the pandemic began in the U.S. and a 33% increase in home visits as people seek to continue care while reducing their risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

“The idea that you do not use an office building to get care — that’s why we started Heal — we bet on the fact that the best doctors come to you,” Dua told Healthcare Dive.

And care does need to continue, particularly vital services like vaccinations and pediatric checkups.

“You cannot ignore preventive screenings and primary care because you can get sick with cancer or with infectious diseases that are treatable and preventable,” Dua said.

Movements toward non-traditional settings existed before anyone had heard of COVID-19, but the realities of the pandemic have shifted resources and spurred investment that will have lasting effects, Ross Nelson, healthcare strategy leader at KPMG, told Healthcare Dive.

“What we’re going to see is there going to be an acceleration of the underlying trends toward home and away from the hospital,” he said.

Some of this was already underway. Multiple large health systems have established programs to provide hospital-level care at home and major employers have inked contracts to have primary care delivered to employees at on-site clinics.

PPE, staff shortages lingering

A key problem for hospitals in the first COVID-19 hotspots, such as Washington state and New York City, was a lack of necessary personal protective equipment, including N95 masks, gowns, face shields and gloves.

Also running low were supplies like ventilators and some drugs necessary for putting people on those machines.

While advances have certainly been made, the country did not have enough time to build up those supply stores before new surges in the South and West. The result has been renewed worries that not enough PPE is available to keep healthcare workers safe.

Chaun Powell, group vice president of strategic supplier engagement at group purchasing organization Premier, said “conservation practices continue to be the key to this” as COVID-19 surges roll through the country. The longer those dire situations continue, the more stress is put on the supply chain before it has a chance to recover.

Premier’s most recent hospital survey found that more than half of respondents said N95s were heavily backordered. Almost half reported the same for isolation gowns and shoe covers.

Calderwood said there has been improvement, however. “We have a much longer days-on-hand PPE supply at this point and the other thing is, we’ve begun to manufacture some of our own PPE,” he said. “That’s something a number of hospitals have done in working with local companies.”

But the ability to manufacture new PPE in the U.S. also depends on the availability of raw materials, which are limited. That means significant advancements in domestic production are likely several months away, Powell said.

Health systems have stepped up the ability to coordinate and attempt to get equipment where it’s needed most, especially for big-ticket items like ventilators. Providers are more hesitant, however, to let go of PPE without the virus being better contained.

The backstop supposed to help hospitals during a crisis is the national stockpile, which the federal government is attempting to resupply. It doesn’t appear to be enough, though, at least not yet, Calderwood said.

“One thing that concerns me is we did have a national stockpile of PPE, and I get the sense that we’ve kind of burned through that supply,” he said. “And now we’re relying on private industry to meet the need.”

Another problem hospitals face as the pandemic drags on is maintaining adequate staffing levels. Doctors, nurses and other front-line employees are in incredibly stressful work environments. The great potential for burnout will exacerbate existing shortages, just as medical schools are still trying to figure out how to continue with training and education.

“Those areas are concerning to our hospitals because our hospitals depend on a whole myriad of medical staff,” Advis CEO Lyndean Brick said. “Whether it’s physicians, nurses, technicians, housekeepers — that whole staff complement is what’s at the core of healthcare. You can have all the technology in the world but if you don’t have somebody to run it that whole system falls apart.”

On top of that is the increase in labor strife as working conditions have deteriorated in some cases. Nurses have reported fearing for their safety among PPE shortages and alleged lapses in protocol. Brick said she expects strike threats and other actions to continue.

Changing workflows

When COVID-19 cases started ramping up for the first time in the U.S., hospitals throughout the country, acting on CMS advice, shut down elective procedures to prepare their facilities for a potential influx of critical patients with the disease. In some areas, hospitals did have to activate surge plans at that time. Others have done so more recently as the result of increases in the South and West.

But few have resorted to once again halting electives. Brick told Healthcare Dive she doesn’t expect that to change, mostly because hospitals have by and large figured out how to properly continue that care.

She trusts any that can’t do so safely, won’t try.

“For the majority of our providers, except in the occasional state where they’re having a real problem right now, I think that we’re going to see elective surgeries still continue,” Brick said. “Because most of our hospitals have capacity right now. They’re able to do this successfully and securely, and it’s really detrimental to patients to not get the care that they need.”

Hospitals rely on elective procedures to drive their revenue, an added motivation to find ways to keep them running even when COVID-19 is detected at greater levels in the community.

Intermountain, based in Salt Lake City, recently performed its 100th organ transplant of the year, ahead of last year’s pace despite the disruption of the COVID-19 crisis.

Alonso, the program director for abdominal transplants, said that while transplants are considered essential services, staff did pause some procedures when electives were halted and have re-evaluated workflow to be as safe as possible to patients, who are at higher risk after surgery because they are immunocompromised.

The hospital developed a triage system to help evaluate what services are necessary based on what level of COVID-19 spread is present in the community and how many beds and staffers are available to treat them.

The system’s main hospital has certain floors and employees designated for COVID-19 treatment. Staff have been reallocated for certain needs like testing and there are plans available if doctors and surgeons need to be deployed to the ICU.

As many outpatient visits as possible are being changed to virtual, but in the building, patients are screened for symptoms and required to wear masks and follow distancing protocols.

At the transplant center, doctors were at one point divided into teams in case someone got sick and coworkers had to self-isolate.

“We went through a dry run where, at the beginning, we shut down incredibly hard to see how we could do it operationally,” Alonso said. Intermountain hasn’t had to do that again, but is ready if such measures become necessary, she said.

Brick and others said that despite the genuinely frightening circumstance brought by the pandemic, hospitals’ responses have been admirable and providers have been quick to adapt. Slow or nonexistent leadership at the federal level, especially in sourcing and obtaining PPE, has been the bigger roadblock.

“Across the board, the whole healthcare industry has responded beautifully to this,” Brick said. “Where our country has fallen down is we don’t have a master plan to deal with this. Our federal leadership is reactionary, and we are not coordinating a master plan to deal with this in the long term. That’s where my concerns are at. My concerns are not at our local hospitals. They have their acts together.”

 

 

 

 

MLB faces its first coronavirus crisis with Marlins outbreak less than a week into season

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/07/26/marlins-delay-return-miami-after-apparent-coronavirus-outbreak-among-players/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1u7AypEX5AoBbLoaKIZ9tSyJqE-khQkODR5GviFpI3LJk8cV6T89CoYcw

Less than a week in, the 2020 Major League Baseball season has already reached its first crisis point, with the Miami Marlins reportedly stuck in Philadelphia and forced to cancel their home opener in Miami on Monday night after as many as a dozen players and coaches tested positive for the coronavirus.

The outbreak potentially has far-reaching consequences, affecting not only the Marlins, but the Philadelphia Phillies, who hosted the Marlins this weekend; the Baltimore Orioles, who were scheduled to open a series in Miami on Monday night; and the New York Yankees, who start a series in Philadelphia on Monday, in which they would occupy the same visitors’ clubhouse the Marlins just departed.

Major League Baseball has made no formal indication of what it would take to halt the 2020 season, with the ultimate decision resting with Commissioner Rob Manfred. An MLB spokesperson did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.

On Sunday, following their game against the Phillies, the Marlins decided to remain overnight at their Philadelphia hotel rather than travel home as scheduled, after three players tested positive. A fourth had tested positive on Friday. The plan, at that point, was to fly home Monday in time for their 7:10 p.m. game at Marlins Park against the Orioles.

In the meantime, the rest of the team’s traveling party was awaiting test results, which according to ESPN, resulted in an additional eight players and two coaches testing positive. Under MLB’s 2020 operations manual, players or coaches who test positive on the road are required to remain in that city and quarantine for 14 days, and must test negative twice at least 24 hours apart to return to the roster.

Unlike most other major sports leagues, MLB decided against the “bubble” model of bringing teams together, under strict quarantine rules, to one or two hub cities to stage its season — an option the players’ union rejected this spring. Instead, the 30 MLB teams are playing in 30 different stadiums and traveling between cities, a step that experts believe increases the degree of difficulty for pulling off a season.

Teams have been granted expanded, 30-man rosters at the start of the season, plus up to an additional 30 reserves who train at an alternative site — which means the Marlins, theoretically, could field a team for its upcoming games, made up of a combination of unaffected players from their big league roster and reserves from their alternative site in nearby Jupiter, Fla.

However, the larger questions are how the Marlins’ outbreak occurred and whether such a crisis, coming within days of teams beginning to travel for games, is cause enough for MLB to take stronger action. Although Florida has among the highest caseload of coronavirus of any state in the United States, the Marlins have been out of the state for nearly a week, having played exhibition games in Atlanta last week before opening their season in Philadelphia.

 

 

 

 

I’m a doctor in Miami. Here’s how I know Florida’s covid-19 outbreak won’t improve anytime soon.

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misleading, Mixed Message, Mortality, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

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July 26: Tracking Florida COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and ...

I knew something was amiss when I had my car repaired in early June, shortly after Miami began relaxing its coronavirus restrictions. At first glance, the dealership looked as if it was following the recommended precautions: Every other seat was blocked off with tape, and customers and workers were wearing face coverings.

On closer inspection, many of the customers’ nostrils protruded above their masks. Staff members wore masks with one-way valves, allowing their breath to escape as they told customers the cost of fixing their clunkers. And no one was enforcing limits on the number of customers who could enter the reception area while waiting for their repairs.

It wasn’t just the repair shop. As I walked around my neighborhood in the early evenings, I’d pass houses with cars packed into their driveways. The sounds of Pitbull and J Balvin blared through the tropical shrubbery — a sure sign of a Miami house party.

A month later, Miami has become the pandemic’s epicenter. Miami-Dade County’s intensive-care units and emergency departments are jammed. Specialists unaccustomed to managing critically ill patients are being called into action. The state has sent 100 additional health workers, mostly nurses, to the county’s large public hospital to help its exhausted staff.

I see patients in one of the hospital’s primary-care clinics. Recently, a colleague started her week as ward attending by being called to a code, one of several occurring simultaneously in different parts of the hospital; a middle-aged woman recovering from the coronavirus had suddenly gone into cardiac arrest. Other colleagues have been intubating physically fit young people who precipitously went into respiratory failure.

This is what happens when your state becomes a national embarrassment. And the reason is clear: We have suffered from failures of political leadership at every level.

Florida’s challenges are similar to those that New York and other northern states faced months ago. But while leaders in those states took aggressive action and modeled good behavior, our state has been significantly more laissez-faire and chaotic. Bars and restaurants closed for indoor service in March but reopened in June; now, Miami-Dade County’s mayor has shut them down again. Opening business might have worked if our state and local officials had enforced the correct wearing of appropriate masks, or modeled good mask-wearing behavior themselves, or provided businesses with instructions on maintaining proper ventilation. But they didn’t.

Covid-19 testing is woefully inadequate, and the lucky folks who can actually score an appointment at one of the state’s free testing sites, such as Marlins Park, are waiting more than a week to receive their results. The perpetually underfunded and politically influenced Florida Department of Health lacks enough staff to adequately trace all the people who test positive. Our leaders should have developed a robust public-health infrastructure capable of supporting contact tracing and quarantine enforcement long ago. They didn’t, and scrambling to assemble these systems in the midst of a pandemic is too little, too late.

Ironically, I feel safer at work, where everyone wears masks correctly and takes proper precautions, than I do out in public. We still have adequate personal protective equipment — for now — and are not yet forced to wear garbage bags and rain ponchos like our colleagues in New York. But many staff are already calling in sick, and we worry we won’t have enough nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors to manage the continuing deluge. And still young medical trainees tell me they see crowds of people, many without masks, congregating in the trendy areas of Miami Beach and in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who only recently began reliably sporting a mask, has thrown up his hands and proclaimed that younger adults are “going to do what they’re going to do,” arguing that he’s powerless to stop them. At the same time, he’s been bullying local school districts to offer in-person classes next month. Unfortunately, many public schools are housed in environmentally unhealthy buildings with lousy ventilation. Several classrooms in my daughter’s public high school lack windows; in other rooms, the windows that do exist don’t open. For years, the building’s outdated air-conditioning system has emitted a musty smell.

In a rational world, the federal government would help us test more people, faster; state and federal leaders would set an example by wearing masks correctly and consistently; local officials would strictly enforce quarantine rules; someone would slap warning labels on those awful ubiquitous online ads for valved masks; and our public health departments would be guided by health experts, not politicians. But this is Florida, a state with a well-established history of being anything but rational.

So for now, the state’s citizens continue to muddle through. My fellow physicians and I are trying to stay on top of a fast-changing situation, while also keeping an eye on hurricane season. In the absence of responsible leadership, we doubt Florida will stop setting records — of the wrong kind — anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

Houston, Miami, other cities face mounting health care worker shortages as infections climb

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Emergency Care, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Front Lines, Health System, Healthcare Providers, Healthcare Worker Shortages, Hospital, Hospital Capacity, Hospital Industry, Intensive Care (ICU), Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Nurses, Out of Control, Pandemic, Pandemic Fatigue, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Physician Burnout, Supply Chain, Telemedicine, Triage • Leave a comment

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Shortages of health care workers are worsening in Houston, Miami, Baton Rouge and other cities battling sustained covid-19 outbreaks, exhausting staffers and straining hospitals’ ability to cope with spiking cases.

That need is especially dire for front-line nurses, respiratory therapists and others who play hands-on, bedside roles where one nurse is often required for each critically ill patient.

While many hospitals have devised ways to stretch material resources — converting surgery wards into specialized covid units and recycling masks and gowns — it is far more difficult to stretch the human workers needed to make the system function.

“At the end of the day, the capacity for critical care is a balance between the space, staff and stuff. And if you have a bottleneck in one, you can’t take additional patients,” said Mahshid Abir, a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and director of the Acute Care Research Unit (ACRU) at the University of Michigan. “You have to have all three … You can’t have a ventilator, but not a respiratory therapist.”

“What this is going to do is it’s going to cost lives, not just for covid patients, but for everyone else in the hospital,” she warned.

The increasingly fraught situation reflects packed hospitals across large swaths of the country: More than 8,800 covid patients are hospitalized in Texas; Florida has more than 9,400; and at least 13 other states also have thousands of hospitalizations, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.

Facilities in several states, including Texas, South Carolina and Indiana, have in recent weeks reported shortages of such workers, according to federal planning documents viewed by The Post, pitting states and hospitals against one another to recruit staff.

On Thursday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said he asked the federal government to send in 700 health-care workers to assist besieged hospitals.

“Even if for some strange reason … you don’t care about covid-19, you should care about that hospital capacity when you have an automobile accident or when you have your heart attack or your stroke, or your mother or grandmother has that stroke,” Edwards said at a news conference.

In Florida, 39 hospitals have requested help from the state for respiratory therapists, nurses and nursing assistants. In South Carolina, the National Guard is sending 40 medical professionals to five hospitals in response to rising cases.

Many medical facilities anticipate their staffing problems will deteriorate, according to the planning documents: Texas is hardest hit, with South Carolina close behind. Needs range from pharmacists to physicians.

Hot spots stretch across the country, from Miami and Atlanta to Southern California and the Rio Grande Valley, and the demands for help are as diffuse as the suffering.

“What we have right now are essentially three New Yorks with these three major states,” White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx said Friday during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.

But today’s diffuse transmission requires innovative thinking and a different response from months ago in New York, say experts. While some doctors have been able to share expertise online and nurses have teamed up to relieve pressures, the overall strains are growing.

“We missed the boat,” said Serena Bumpus, a leader of multiple Texas nursing organizations and regional director of nursing for the Austin Round Rock Region of Baylor Scott and White Health.

Bumpus blames a lack of coordination at national and state officials. “It feels like this free-for-all,” she said, “and each organization is just kind of left up to their own devices to try to figure this out.”

In a disaster, a hospital or local health system typically brings in help from neighboring communities. But that standard emergency protocol, which comes into play following a hurricane or tornado, “is predicated on the notion that you’ll have a concentrated area of impact,” said Christopher Nelson, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

That is how Texas has functioned in the past, said Jennifer Banda, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the Texas Hospital Association, recalling the influx of temporary help after Hurricane Harvey deluged Houston three years ago.

It is how the response took shape early in the outbreak, when health-care workers headed to hard-hit New York.

But the sustained and far-flung nature of the pandemic has made that approach unworkable. “The challenge right now,” Banda said, “is we are taxing the system all across the country.”

Theresa Q. Tran, an emergency medicine physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, began to feel the crunch in June. Only a few weeks before, she had texted a friend to say how disheartening it was to see crowds of people reveling outdoors without masks on Memorial Day weekend.

Her fears were borne out when she found herself making call after call after call from her ER, unable to admit a critically ill patient because her hospital had run out of ICU space, but unable to find a hospital able to take them.

Under normal circumstances, the transfer of such patients — “where you’re afraid to look away, or to blink, because they may just crash on you,” as Tran describes them — happens quickly to ensure the close monitoring the ICU affords.

Those critical patients begin to stall in the ER, stretching the abilities of the nurses and doctors attending to them. “A lot of people, they come in, and they need attention immediately,” Tran said, noting that emergency physicians are constantly racing against time. “Time is brain, or time is heart.”

By mid-July, an influx of “surge” staff brought relief, Tran said. But that was short-lived as the crisis jumped from one locality to the next, with the emergency procedures to bring in more staff never quite keeping up with the rising infections.

An ER physician in the Rio Grande Valley said all three of the major trauma hospitals in the area have long since run out of the ability to absorb new ICU patients.

“We’ve been full for weeks,” said the physician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for speaking out about the conditions.

“The truth is, the majority of our work now in the emergency department is ICU work,” he said. “Some of our patients down here, we’re now holding them for days.” And each one of those critically ill patients needs a nurse to stay with them.

When ICU space has opened up — maybe two, three, four beds — it never feels like relief, he said, because in the time it takes to move those patients out, 20 new ones arrive.

Even with help his hospital has received — masks and gowns were procured, and the staff more than doubled in the past few weeks with relief nurses and other health-care workers from outside — it still is not enough.

The local nurses are exhausted. Some quit. Even the relief nurses who helped out in New York in the spring seem horrified by the scale of the disaster in South Texas, he said.

“If no one comes and helps us out and gives us the ammo we need to fight this thing, we are not going to win,” the doctor said.

One of the root causes of the problem in the United States is that emergency departments and ICUs are often operating at or near capacity, Abir and Nelson said, putting them dangerously close to shortages before a crisis even hits.

Texas, along with 32 other states, has joined a licensure compact, allowing nurses to practice across state borders, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit from other parts of the country.

Texas medical facilities can apply to the Department of State Health Services for staffers to fill a critical shortage, typically for a two-week period. But two weeks, which would allow time to respond to most disasters, hardly registers in a pandemic, so facilities have to ask for extensions or make new applications.

South Carolina last week issued an order that allows nursing graduates who have not yet completed their licensing exams to begin working under supervision. Prisma Health, the state’s biggest hospital system, said this week that the number of patients admitted to its hospitals has more than tripled in the past three weeks and is approaching 300 new patients a day.

“As the capacity increases, so does the need for additional staff,” Scott Sasser, the incident commander for Prisma Health’s covid-19 response said in a statement. Prisma has so far shifted nurses from one area to another, brought back furloughed nurses, hired more physicians and brought in temporary nurse hires, among other measures, Sasser said.

Bumpus has fielded calls from nurses all over the country — some as far afield as the United Kingdom — wanting to know how they can help. But Bumpus says she does not have an easy answer.

“I’ve had to kind of just do my own digging and use my connections,” she said. At first, she said, interested nurses were asked to register through the Texas Disaster Volunteer Registry; but then the system never seemed to be put to use.

Later she learned — “by happenstance … literally by social media” — that the state had contracted with private agencies to find nurses. So now she directs callers to those agencies.

Even rural parts of Texas that were spared initially are being ravaged by the virus, according to John Henderson, CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals.

“Unless things start getting better in short order, we don’t have enough staff,” he acknowledged. As for filling critical staffing gaps by moving people around, “even the state admits that they can’t continue to do that,” Henderson said.

The situation has become so dire in some rural parts of the state that Judge Eloy Vera implored people to stay home on the Starr County Facebook page, warning, “Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources and our doctors are going to have to decide who receives treatment, and who is sent home to die.”

Steven Gularte, CEO of Chambers Health in Anahuac, Tex., 45 miles from Houston, said he had to bring in 10 nurses to help staff his 14-bed hospital after Houston facilities started appealing for help to care for patients who no longer needed intensive care but were not ready to go home.

“Normally, we are referring to them,” Gularte said. “Now, they are referring to us.”

Donald M. Yealy, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said rather than sending staff to other states, his hospital has helped others virtually, particularly to support pulmonary and intensive care physicians.

“Covid has been catalytic in how we think about health care,” Yealy said, providing lessons that will outlast the pandemic.

But telehealth can do little to relieve the fatigue and fear that goes with front-line work in a prolonged pandemic. Donning and doffing masks, gowns and gloves is time consuming. Nurses worry about taking the virus home to their families.

“It is high energy work with a constant grind that is hard on people,” said Michael Sweat, director of the Center for Global Health at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Coronavirus has turned the regular staffing challenge at Harris Health in Houston into a daily life-or-death juggle for Pamela Russell, associate administrator of nursing operations, who helps provide supplemental workers for the system’s two public hospitals and 46 outpatient clinics.

Now, 162 staff members — including more than 50 nurses — are quarantined, either because they tested positive or are awaiting results. Many others need flexible schedules to accommodate child care, she said. Some cannot work in coronavirus units because of their own medical conditions. A few contract nurses left abruptly after learning their units would soon be taking covid-positive patients.

Russell has turned to the state and the international nonprofit Project Hope for resources, even as she acts as a morale booster, encouraging restaurants to send meals and supporting the hospital CEO in his cheerleading rounds.

“It’s hard to say how long we can do this. I just don’t know” said Russell, who praised the commitment of the nurses. “Like I said, it’s a calling. But I don’t see it being sustainable.”

 

 

 

 

Cartoon – It’s all about Re-Branding in this Economy

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Branding, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misleading, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Trust, Truth, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

Cartoon – It's all about Re-Branding in this economy | HENRY KOTULA