March 19, 2020 | COVID-19 roundup
INDUSTRY NEWS
With the news changing almost hourly, it’s important to have current, evidence-based information. To that end, several health care news organizations have added coronavirus-specific pages to their sites, including the following: Kaiser Health News, Modern Healthcare, Medscape, MedPage Today and FierceHealthcare.
Interoperability timelines “troubling”
Payer and provider groups are warning that the about six- and nine-month timelines to implement interoperability regulations are “troubling” and unrealistic in light of the growing pandemic. “The timeline was overly ambitious in the first place. Add everyone’s response to the pandemic and the timeline is more difficult to meet,” AHIP’s Danielle Lloyd told FierceHealthcare. (FierceHealthcare)
DDOS attack on HHS: part of disinformation campaign?
The Department of Health and Human Services experienced a cyberattack—a distributed denial of service, or DDOS—Sunday night. According to Bloomberg, the attack was related to its coronavirus response in an attempt to slow down its operations. There was no apparent breach of the HHS system. Sources tell Bloomberg that the attack was part of a campaign of disruption and disinformation intended to undermine coronavirus response. It may have been the work of a foreign actor. (Bloomberg)
INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
Florida expands pharmacist, APN scope of practice
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation last week to expand the roles of pharmacists and some nurses, allowing them to test and treat certain conditions and perform certain acts without the supervision of a physician. HB 389 allows pharmacists to, among other things, test and treat patients for the flu and strep throat. HB 607 allows certain advanced practice nurses to provide primary care and practice independently of doctors. They would need at least 3,000 hours of experience under the supervision of a physician. They would also have to complete minimum graduate level course work in differential diagnosis and pharmacology. (Tampa Bay Times; Florida Politics)
CONSUMERS & PROVIDERS
Social distancing is necessary to flatten the coronavirus curve and prevent the current pandemic from worsening. But in addition to an economic recession, the coronavirus could lead to “social recession,” Ezra Klein warns in Vox. The limitations on social contact will be especially hard on older adults and people with disabilities or preexisting health conditions—populations most vulnerable to isolation and loneliness.
Research has long shown that social isolation and loneliness have a deleterious effect on health. (Vox)
Fax and snail mail still dominate
Most hospitals reported relying on a mix of physical and electronic records in 2018, and about 70% reported using mail or fax to send and receive summaries of care records. The findings come from an ONC report. However, electronic availability of patient health information from outside sources increased by 10% in 2018, resulting in more than half of hospitals having EHR information available at point of care. Only around 10% of hospitals said they exclusively use electronic methods for sending and receiving summary of care records. (Healthcare Dive; ONC report)
NEW & NOTED
Osteoarthritis and premature death: Researchers published in the journal RMD Open report a significant relationship between symptomatic osteoarthritis and premature death. They identified lack of walking as a key contributing factor. “Focusing on encouraging people to walk frequently or ‘get out and about’ is important for reducing mortality in people with OA; while depression, anxiety and unrefreshed sleep appear to have a role, the clinical significance is low,” they wrote. (RMD Open; Medical News Today)
More flexibility during pandemic: The administration has issued blanket waivers and new flexibilities to help hospitals and facilities cope with the coronavirus outbreak. To help clarify these changes, CMS released a frequently-asked-questions document last Friday. (FierceHealthcare; CMS FAQ)
MedPAC recommends…: The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommends increasing payments for hospitals, long-term care facilities and dialysis services while decreasing payments for home health and inpatient rehabilitation in 2021. MedPAC also repeated its recommendation to require ambulatory surgical centers to report cost data, according to its annual March report to Congress. (Healthcare Dive; report)
MULTI-MEDIA
One concern about the impact of COVID-19 on providers is ICU capacity. Modern Healthcare has created an interactive table that provides an estimate of hospital beds for acute-care, critical-access and children’s hospitals by state. (Modern Healthcare)
MARKETVOICES...QUOTES WORTH READING
“But we’ve also entered a new period of social pain. There’s going to be a level of social suffering related to isolation and the cost of social distancing that very few people are discussing yet.”—Eric Klinenberg, a New York University sociologist who has studied the way social isolation leaves older Americans vulnerable in emergencies, quoted in Vox