June 18, 2020 | Buying from “the parking lot guy”
INDUSTRY NEWS
Getting safety gear from “the parking lot guy”
From shady parking lot deals to Etsy, health care workers are looking for masks and other safety gear anywhere they can. Carol Silver Elliott, president of the Jewish Home Family, a nursing home in New Jersey, tells The Guardian about wiring a “significant” amount of money to someone she knows only as “the parking lot guy” for protective equipment for her staff. Dr. Paula Muto, a general surgeon in Massachusetts, has struggled to find lidocaine and saline—and she expects it to get worse when hospitals resume elective procedures. Her backup plan? She knows someone in Alabama who can source supplies from Europe. (The Guardian)
Public health officials are under attack. Kaiser Health News and the Associated Press report that at least 27 state and local health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 13 states. Elected officials and members of the public, frustrated with safety restrictions, sometime turn public health workers into “politicized punching bags, battering them with countless angry calls and even physical threats,” according to the article. Emily Brown—the recently fired Rio Grande County (Colo.) Public Health Department director—encountered photos of her and other health officials with references to “armed citizens” and “bodies swinging from trees.” (AP)
We’re learning a bit more about pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome temporally associated with COVID-19 (PIMS). For example, because the number of PIMS cases increased sharply after April 13, peaking four to five weeks after the peak of COVID-19 cases, researchers think it’s a post-infection syndrome. And a small prospective observational study published in BMJ suggests that PIMS is most common in children of African ancestry. (CIDRAP)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
“Substantial safety risk” in many EHR systems
“Overall, substantial safety risk persists in current hospital EHR systems.” That’s the conclusion of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It’s not all bad: Overall, hospital EHR systems’ ability to detect harmful medication-ordering errors improved from 54% in 2009 to 66% in 2018. But there’s no consistency. The findings suggest that despite the almost-universal adoption of EHRs during the past two decades, “the associations of these systems with safety are still mixed. These EHR systems are large, complex, and constantly evolving, yet they are largely unregulated with respect to safety.” (JAMA)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Lesson from the pandemic: antibiotic overprescribing
When they were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, physicians turned to broad-spectrum antibiotics—not for the virus, of course, but they feared the patients could be vulnerable to life-threatening secondary bacterial infections as well. But that fear appears to have been overblown. Now, as concerns about drug-resistant infections increase, physicians and researchers are using lessons from the experience to push for action. “The bottom line is we can do better, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves facing a superbug that rivals the crisis posed by COVID-19,” says Dr. Timothy M. Persons, the GAO’s chief scientist. (New York Times)
Hospitals, practices adding pharmacists to team
Pharmacists are playing an increasing role in health care delivery systems. Employment at non-retail settings—hospitals, physician offices, outpatient care centers and home health—grew by 11,580 from 2017 to 2019. Hospitals accounted for 85% of pharmacist employment in non-retail settings, Drug Channels reports. The share of pharmacists employed in non-retail settings grew from 27% in 2013 to 31% in 2019. Overall, total pharmacist employment grew in 2019, but the number working in retail settings decreased. (Drug Channels)
NEW & NOTED
Optum hires Conway: Patrick Conway, MD, has joined UnitedHealth Group's Optum subsidiary as CEO of Care Solutions. He served as a senior executive in residence there from February to April. He tweeted that he would be focusing on ways to improve patient care with a focus on value-based care models. (Fierce Healthcare)
A link between negative thinking and Alzheimer’s? Repetitive negative thinking is associated with cognitive and neuropathological markers of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. “This study identifies a novel and potentially modifiable psychological process—repetitive negative thinking—that is associated with increased risk for dementia,” coauthor Natalie Marchant, PhD, tells MedPage Today. (MedPage Today; Alzheimer's & Dementia)
WHO says to put on the mask: Wear cloth masks in public—“on public transport, in shops, or in other confined or crowded environments.” That’s the latest WHO guidance. Those at high risk, including those over 60, should wear medical masks in certain settings. (VOX)
MULTI-MEDIA
Dorelia Rivera is a patient advocate, both professionally and personally. In this podcast from the WCG Institute, she discusses racial and ethnic health disparities and her work improving access to health care services and clinical trials for underrepresented communities. She also talks about being the mother of a child with an ultra-rare condition, and how her persistence saved her child’s life. (Google podcasts)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
“They finally were tired of me not going along the line they wanted me to go along.”—Emily Brown, the recently fired Rio Grande County (Colo.) Public Health Department director, quoted by the AP