Weekender 5/8/20

Weekly News Recap

• Allscripts reports Q1 results that miss Wall Street expectations for both revenue and earnings.
• CVS Health beats Q1 expectations and reports a 600% increase in telemedicine visits in its MinuteClinic business.
• Change Healthcare acquires ERx Network, sells its Connected Analytics business.
• Johns Hopkins recommendations for addressing COVID-19 include making EHRs searchable by public health officials, creating a platform for hospitals to share PPE and medical supply availability, and improving healthcare supply chain tracking and coordination.
• Duke University’s interoperability recommendations for containing COVID-19 include collecting and reporting patient demographics with samples, defining a minimum data set, and expanding the use of the National Syndromic Surveillance Program.
• CMS issue waivers to pay full rates for telephone-based encounters.
• Epic launches a public website where customers can post their observational findings about COVID-19 or other health and public health issues.

Best Reader Comments

My former employer (an EHR company) had onsite primary care clinics for all employees that were also set up as somewhat of a showcase of how to “EHR” well. All the exam rooms had two armchairs facing a large monitor that the physician’s laptop was connected to. After the exam the doc would move the conversation over to those chairs to write up the note and finish the visit, making the act of writing the note more of a collaborative experience. As a patient, it felt a lot better than the doc plugging away on a laptop on their little stool while the patient sits on butcher’s paper. (EHRing well)

There’s actually a FHIR-based replacement to CCOW called FHIRCast that’s been in the development / connectathon testing stage for about two years. (Not sure if it’s in production anywhere yet.) There’s actually a track focused on testing it and playing with it during the May 13-15 connectathon too. I’m sure you’d be welcome to show up and dabble! (Lloyd McKenzie)

Re: remdesivir study. Statistical significance means less than 5% probability the result is due to chance, but you have to specify the one thing you’re measuring in advance. They didn’t do that—instead changed from mortality to recovery time. This sort of thing raises the question of how many more slices of the apple they would have taken until something passed the test. (Robert D. Lafsky, MD)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. F in Michigan, who requested Osmo learning sets for her first grade class. She reported in early February, “My students absolutely love Osmo. While they believe that they are playing, they are learning so much! My students are using Osmo Coding Awbie and Osmo Detective Agency both cooperatively and independently. They look forward to Friday afternoons, which is when we have technology time to explore and learn. Prior to the funding of this project, I only had two sets of these games. By donating to my project, my students now have the choice to work on their own or with a buddy to feed strawberries to Awbie as they code a path for him or solve the mystery in Paris. My students are so excited to explore with Osmo!”

Intermountain Healthcare cancels its agreement to send COVID-19 capacity data to data monitoring vendor Banjo following reports that the company’s CEO was a white supremacist as a teen and served as the getaway driver in a KKK synagogue shooting. The company has received $100 million in funding to develop police surveillance tools, with the state of Utah being a big customer until it cancelled after Damien Patton’s history surfaced. He says he was a homeless high school dropout who was taken in by skinhead and white supremacy groups.

The Ascension Seton nurse whose sign for co-workers explained why he was staying so long in the room of a COVID-19 patient provides this explanation:

I just feel like I was doing, as a nurse, what I’ve been taught. That’s what you do. I work at Seton and we have a policy that no one ever dies alone. It doesn’t matter, any circumstance. COVID makes it more difficult, but no one dies alone. Someone’s going to be there in your room with you.

A Harvard Medical School professor says that pathogen-fueled anti-immigration sentiment isn’t new, as early US immigration laws were created out of fear of disease, especially cholera. A New York City mob, led by wealthy landowners, stormed the city’s 1,000-bed New York Marine Hospital, called Quarantine, in 1858 and burned it down, returning the next night to use battering rams to level what remained. Many of Quarantine’s patients were new immigrants who had arrived by ships on which health inspectors found at least one person who was suspected of having an infectious disease, which then forced all of the ship’s occupants into lockdown.

Food service vendor Aramark opens makeshift grocery stores in several New Orleans hospitals so that healthcare workers don’t have to go shopping for essential and hard-to-find groceries after work.

In Case You Missed It

• News 5/8/20
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 5/7/20
• News 5/6/20
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 5/4/20
• Readers Write: How Health Systems Use Technology in New Ways to Adapt to COVID-19
• Monday Morning Update 5/4/20

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