About the public’s health
FDA grants emergency authorization to drug that showed promise in treating covid-19, Trump says: “The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for Gilead Sciences’s antiviral drug remdesivir for patients hospitalized with a severe case of covid-19.”
Three-fifths of new coronavirus cases in China show no symptoms: “A Financial Times analysis of the more complete data into Covid-19 that the Chinese government began publishing at the start of April found that 60 per cent of confirmed cases recorded over the past month were non-symptomatic at time of testing.” This finding has significant public health implications, since these people can easily spread the disease.
Structural Basis for Potent Neutralization of Betacoronaviruses by Single-domain Camelid Antibodies: Llamas (and other members of the camelid family) have two types of antibodies, those similar to humans and much smaller ones called single-domain antibodies or “nanobodies.” Researchers at the University of Texas are exploring these later versions for their ability to attack the spikes on coronavirus that are necessary for cellular attachment.
Trump Administration Issues Second Round of Sweeping Changes to Support U.S. Healthcare System During COVID-19 Pandemic: The first interesting thing about this “article” is that it is an official announcement from CMS, yet Trump appears in the headline.
This announcement has many different provisions so you will need to read the entire document to get the full message. Examples include:
To help ensure that Medicare beneficiaries have broad access to testing related to COVID-19, a written practitioner’s order is no longer required for the COVID-19 test for Medicare payment purposes.
CMS is giving providers flexibility during the pandemic to increase the number of beds for COVID-19 patients while receiving stable, predictable Medicare payments.
CMS is highlighting flexibilities that allow payment for outpatient hospital services -- such as wound care, drug administration, and behavioral health services -- that are delivered in temporary expansion locations, including parking lot tents, converted hotels, or patients’ homes (when they’re temporarily designated as part of a hospital).
Nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and physician assistants can now provide home health services, as mandated by the CARES Act. These practitioners can now (1) order home health services; (2) establish and periodically review a plan of care for home health patients; and (3) certify and re-certify that the patient is eligible for home health services. Previously, Medicare and Medicaid home health beneficiaries could only receive home health services with the certification of a physician. These changes are effective for both Medicare and Medicaid.
CMS will not reduce Medicare payments for teaching hospitals that shift their residents to other hospitals to meet COVID-related needs, or penalize hospitals without teaching programs that accept these residents.
NIH begins taking pitches for its $1.5B COVID-19 diagnostics competition: “The National Institutes of Health kicked off what it describes as a ‘Shark Tank’-like effort to select and fund new diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus, and its offering a total of $1.5 billion to be divvied up among the winners.
The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative, or RADx, aims to fast track companies’ validation, regulatory review and production, with the goal of delivering millions of at-home or point-of-care tests per week to the public by the end of the summer.”
A SARS-CoV-2 protein interaction map reveals targets for drug repurposing: If you are interested in the basic science of SARS-CoV-2, this article from Nature provides potential targets and drug candidates to attack the virus.
The Future of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned from Pandemic Influenza: The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) predicts that SARS-CoV-2 is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18-24 months, until there is some “heard immunity,” with about 60% to 70% of the population having been infected. In a worst-case scenario there will be a second wave of infections in fall and winter.
About healthcare quality and safety
Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade: This announcement is the semiannual report that grades hospitals on safety. You can look up individual institutions. Very few received “A” grades for all measures.
About health insurance
Estimating the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare costs in 2020: Key factors of the cost trajectory: As previously explained, COVID-19 costs will be the net of an increase from treating the disease less savings from postponement of elective procedures. The actuarial firm, Milliman, projects “a net reduction in medical costs for healthcare payers by at least $75 billion and as much as $575 billion if the deferral and elimination of care continues through the end of 2020.”
Financial updates from Cigna, Anthem, Centene & Humana: Basically, revenue is up and net earnings are down- but no losses.
About healthcare IT
As coronavirus strikes, crucial data in electronic health records hard to harvest: Pooling ”data from the digital records systems in thousands of hospitals has proved a technical nightmare thus far. That’s largely because software built by rival technology firms often cannot retrieve and share information to help doctors judge which coronavirus treatments are helping patients recover.” That’s the price of not creating a national standard for interoperability when Meaningful Use was enacted.