August 6, 2020 | Child superspreaders?
INDUSTRY NEWS
Latest telehealth bill would make changes permanent
There’s yet another telehealth bill in the hopper: Sen. Lamar Alexander’s Telehealth Modernization Act. It would make permanent several COVID-related telehealth changes. Among them, it would allow patients to receive telehealth services regardless of location and permit additional practitioners to be reimbursed for telehealth services. In a statement, he pointed out that Vanderbilt University Medical Center went from 10 telehealth visits a day pre-pandemic to more than 2,000 a day. “Congress should learn from these four months of lessons, which will likely mean that hundreds of millions of physician-patient visits will be remote or online that were in-person before.” (mHealth Intelligence; Alexander press release)
Little children may be superspreaders, study suggests
Children younger than age five may host up to 100 times as much of the coronavirus in the upper respiratory tract as adults, according to research published in JAMA Pediatrics. The study does not prove that infected children are contagious, but it nevertheless raises the possibility that these youngsters may be able to spread COVID-19 as easily as adults—even if they aren’t all that sick. “This supports the idea that children are able to get infected and replicate virus and therefore shed and transmit virus just as much as older children and adults,” says lead author Taylor Heald-Sargent, MD, PhD. (NBC News; JAMA Pediatrics)
Obamacare enrollment is surging during the pandemic. “There could be actually more than 1 million new enrollees to the exchanges currently in 2020" due to the impact of COVID-19, Chad Brooker, associate principal of Avalere, tells Bloomberg Law. This surge could help states that are launching their own exchanges. An increase in enrollees—especially healthy ones—will likely reduce per-person costs for insurers, particularly as more healthy people look to get covered. That could attract more insurers to the exchanges, leading to increased competition and reduced premiums. (Bloomberg Law)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
Employers essential to reforming, optimizing medication use
“Employers are powerful influencers in driving system change, and they can assert that influence to address misaligned incentives within the medication use system,” writes Katherine Capps, executive director of GTMRx Institute. Why should they get involved in medication management reform? She offers several reasons, including the facts that achieving medication optimization will reduce waste in health care spending, ensure appropriate use of medications and decrease low-value care. She offers five tips to help employers become more involved. Among them: Ask vendors and carriers for data and analytics related to how they address medication therapy problems. (Managed Healthcare Executive)
Pandemic points the way forward for health care
The pandemic has created four intertwined health care crises: insurance coverage, financial losses for providers, racial and ethnic disparities and a crisis in public health, Commonwealth Fund leaders write in NEJM. These crises reveal and compound underlying problems in the health care system, but they also point the way toward reform. Citing Churchill, they write, “…one should never let a crisis go to waste. We may now have the opportunity to reform a flawed health care system that made the novel coronavirus far more damaging in the United States than it had to be.” (NEJM)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Music as therapy for COVID patients
Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego and UC San Diego Health are among a growing number of health systems and hospitals offering COVID-19 patients free, virtual one-on-one private concerts by string musicians from all over the country. “I watch the professional musicians playing for them and literally before my eyes I see the [patients] doze off,” Truong-Giang Huynh, the ICU manager at Scripps Mercy, tells the San Diego Union Tribune. He’s also seen recently extubated patients, so agitated that their arms are strapped down to keep them from pulling out tubes, become still and calm. (San Diego Union Tribune)
NEW & NOTED
Frontline risk: Frontline health workers in the U.S. and U.K. were at least 3.4 times more likely than the general population to test positive for COVID-19. “Health-care systems should ensure adequate availability of PPE and develop additional strategies to protect health-care workers from COVID-19, particularly those from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds,” researchers conclude. (Lancet; MedPage Today)
COVID undermines family wellbeing: The pandemic and its economic impact has had a significant deleterious effect on the physical and emotional well-being of parents and children, according to research published in Pediatrics. Researchers found that 27% of parents reported worsening mental health for themselves and 14% reported worsening behavioral health for their children since March 2020. (Pediatrics; Physician’s Briefing)
PCPs continue to struggle: Roughly 90% of primary practices continue to face COVID-19-related challenges, according to a survey of almost 600 primary care clinicians conducted July 10-13 by the Larry A. Green Center and the Primary Care Collaborative. Overall, only 13% of PCPs surveyed said they are adapting to a “new normal.” (Fierce Healthcare; survey results)
MULTI-MEDIA
SCOTUS and ACA: Together again
The Affordable Care Act will come before the Supreme Court this fall for the seventh time in eight years. Julie Rovner, the chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News and SCOTUStalk’s Amy Howe will talk about California v. Texas., the history of ACA challenges and why this time is different. (SCOTUSblog)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
“There’s always going to be this specter above us. We’re going to be going, ‘What did I hear them say on the news? Is it happening again?’”—Dr. Lane Aiena, a primary care physician in a six-doctor practice in Huntsville, Texas, on the legacy of COVID-19, quoted in Stateline