March 11, 2021 | An insiders’ view of a COVID ICU

INDUSTRY NEWS

Joining forces to lobby for home health

Intermountain Healthcare and Ascension, in partnership with several home-based care companies, have formed the Moving Health Home Coalition. The coalition will lobby Congress to make permanent COVID-19 era changes to CMS home health care reimbursement, Modern Healthcare reports. One of the biggest policy requests is to allow hospitals to continue hospital-at-home programs. The coalition also wants to push for Medicare to cover high-acuity home-based services when it's an evidence-based practice used in a private sector model. (Modern Healthcare*)

More insurers offer virtual insurance plans

Several health insurers are now offering “virtual-first” plans to incorporate telehealth, offer round-the-clock access to care and focus on primary care. It’s not just a COVID-era development. Humana, for example, announced its virtual-first health plan in April 2019. As more virtual-first plans come to market, commonalities are emerging, reports HealthPayerIntelligence. Among them: the goal of providing constant access to care, a focus on primary care and the decision to supplement plan member engagement with concierge-style support. (HealthPayerIntelligence)

INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION

CDS tool improves COVID diagnostic process

A clinical decision support tool that guides clinicians through evaluation of suspected COVID-19 patients saves time and improves accuracy: It reduces the number of repeated tests, the time spent in isolation units and the number of misdiagnoses, according to research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The COvid Risk cALculator (CORAL) is embedded in the EHR. The clinician answers a series of questions about the patient's symptoms, risk factors and imaging findings and is then guided through a standardized COVID-19 diagnostic workup of the patient based on up-to-date guidelines. (HealthITAnalytics; Clinical Infectious Diseases)

Widespread COVID testing coming soon

The Biden administration will soon launch the first of several COVID-19 testing hubs as part of its initiative to expand testing in K-8 schools and congregate settings such as homeless shelters. “You need to be testing broadly even with the vaccine,” Scott Becker, CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories tells Politico. “We're still going to want to make sure that we have a good handle on this pandemic.” HHS stresses these hubs are but one piece of a broader strategy to ensure adequate testing. (Politico)

CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS

Testimony: Include PCPs in the vaccination process

Want to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy? Let people talk to their primary care physician about it. That was the message public health experts delivered to the House Ways & Means Health Subcommittee. Vaccine efficacy is complex, Ashish Jha, MD, dean of Brown University School of Public Health told the panel. "It would be ideal if people would sit down with their physician and have this conversation; the issues are complicated and just don't fit on a headline." PCPs are being underutilized in another important way, experts testified: More should be providing vaccinations. (MedPage Today*)

Cardiometabolic conditions linked to COVID hospitalizations

Most COVID-19 hospitalizations in the US appear attributable to four cardiometabolic conditions, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Among the 906,849 COVID-19 hospitalizations among US adults as of November 2020, 30% were attributable to obesity, 26% to hypertension, 21% to diabetes and 12% to heart failure, Medscape Medical News reports. “Our findings lend further support to the need for prioritizing vaccine distribution to individuals with cardiometabolic conditions, particularly among demographic subpopulations at higher risk such as the elderly, Blacks and Hispanics.” (Medscape Medical News; Journal of the American Heart Association)

NEW & NOTED

Zoom fatigue is real: Four aspects of prolonged video chats contribute to “Zoom fatigue,” according to research published in Technology, Mind and Behavior. They are excessive amounts of close-up eye gaze, cognitive load, increased self-evaluation from staring at video of oneself and constraints on physical mobility. Want to assess your own Zoom fatigue and contribute to research? Take the survey here. (Stanford News; Technology, Mind and Behavior)

Permanent telehealth expansion? Congressional support for permanently expanding access to telehealth appears to be growing, but questions remain—including those related to reimbursement. Telehealth built on a fee-for-service infrastructure "isn't a silver bullet for the deeper problems that exist," warns Health Subcommittee Chairwoman Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. (Healthcare Dive)

Altria to FDA: Help us with marketing! Marlboro parent Altria is asking the FDA to help it spread the word that nicotine doesn’t cause cancer. The company asked the FDA to tackle misperceptions about nicotine as part of a proposed $100 million advertising campaign to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. The FDA had no comment. (Bloomberg News)

MULTI-MEDIA

An insiders’ view of a COVID ICU

A short film produced by the New York Times provides a nurses’ firsthand perspective of the brutality of the pandemic inside a COVID-19 I.C.U. (New York Times)

MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING

“Videoconferencing is a good thing for remote communication, but just think about the medium – just because you can use video doesn’t mean you have to,”—author Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, discussing his paper on Zoom fatigue with Stanford News