Tag: telehealth

Burgess Hill, West Sussex – 12 January, 2021 Covid-19 home PCR self-test kit.

Pandemic Diagnostics: Present and Future Implications of Self-Testing Reimbursement

David Simon Leave a comment

By David A. Simon

The process of diagnosing a disease or condition, including detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection, is changing.

Consumers now can not only collect their specimen from their living room couch, but they can test it while watching Netflix. Sampling, testing, and obtaining results all can be done in a patient’s home.

For communicable diseases like COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, at-home testing has considerable public health benefits. In addition to being more convenient than traditional diagnostics, self-testing can substantially reduce or eliminate the risk that infected individuals will spread the virus en route to a testing site.

This innovation has been spurred, in part, by a powerful incentive: the federal government has all-but guaranteed reimbursement for these tests.

Read More

Physical therapist helps person in wheelchair.

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Changed Caregiver Education and Training

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Elizabeth Hansen

As a Physical Therapy Practice Leader, I help patients at the rehabilitation level of care — patients who have sustained a significant injury or disease that has life-changing implications.

Caregivers play an important role in the discharge of these patients from the in-patient context back to the home. They take on the burden of learning the techniques and interventions recommended by the clinical team. They may be learning how to use and maintain new equipment, such as power wheelchairs, feeding tubes, and lifts.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have noticed increased distress among both health care providers and family caregivers as patients are getting ready to discharge home, due in large part to challenges posed by the pandemic to family health care education.

Read More

Senior citizen woman in wheelchair in a nursing home.

Telehealth and the Future of Long-Term Care

Tara Sklar Leave a comment

Join us on Wednesday, April 7 for further discussion of these issues during our virtual event, “Triumphs & Tensions of the Telehealth Boom.“

By Tara Sklar

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend away from providing health care and long-term care in institutional settings in ways not previously imagined; the result of a reckoning with the massacre that disproportionately killed hundreds of thousands of older adults living in nursing homes or similar congregate facilities, along with the staff who cared for them.

Beyond the immediate staffing and infection control issues at hand, this juncture leads to a larger question, in the U.S. and abroad: how can we best care for an older population in the decades — and not just years — ahead?

The major advances and shortfalls that have surfaced during the pandemic around telehealth and its related technologies in digital home health care are essential to this discussion.

Read More

Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

Viewing Telehealth Policymaking Through the Lens of Disability

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Join us on Wednesday, April 7 for further discussion of these issues during our virtual event, “Triumphs & Tensions of the Telehealth Boom.“

By Laura C. Hoffman

As a means for delivering health care, telehealth will only be as successful as it is accessible to our most vulnerable populations.

Although the utilization of telehealth has the great potential to increase access to health care while simultaneously reducing barriers to access for individuals, people with disabilities face multiple barriers to telehealth. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted these challenges.

Read More

Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

Providing Cancer Care in the Age of COVID-19

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Samyukta Mullangi, Johnetta Blakeley, and Stephen Schleicher

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges to oncology care; an area of medicine that typically involves frequent, in-person patient visits to complete a course of treatment.

In many ways, COVID-19 has served as a stress test for the specialty, and has catalyzed adaptive changes that we hope will make the oncology care, and the health care system in general, more resilient going forward.

Read More

Healthcare workers carrying signs protest for improved Covid-19 testing and workplace safety policies outside of UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles,Dec. 9, 2020.

Beyond 20/20: The Post-COVID Future of Health Care

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Cynthia Orofo

There are two experiences I will never forget as a nurse: the first time I had to withdraw care from a patient and the first day working on a COVID ICU.

Both were unforgiving reminders that the ICU is a demanding place of work that will stress you in every way. But the latter experience was unique for a few particular reasons. Before the end of that first shift, I had overheard several staff members on the floor speak about their fears, thoughts of the unknown, and their version of the “new normal.” As I realized that life would almost certainly not be the same, I developed my own vision of the “new normal” of health care.

Read More

Emergency department entrance.

Pandemic Lays Bare Shortcomings of Health Care Institutions

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Lauren Oshry

In 1982, when AIDS was first described, I was a first-year medical student in New York City, the epicenter of the epidemic in the U.S. To the usual fears of a medical student — fears of failing to understand, to learn, to perform — was the added fear of contracting a debilitating and universally fatal infection, for which there was no treatment. But our work felt urgent and valued, and the camaraderie among medical students and our mentors is now what I remember most.

Nearly forty years later, my experience as an attending oncologist during COVID-19 has been different. Yes, I am older and less naïve, but also this pandemic has been managed in fundamentally different ways. Aside from the obvious federal mismanagement, my own institution has deeply disappointed me. The institutional shortcomings we had long tolerated and adapted to were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and massively failed our patients and morally devastated those of us on the frontlines.

As a provider in a large safety net hospital, I care for a predominantly minority population in the lowest economic bracket. These would be the individuals disproportionately affected by COVID-19, with highest rates of infection and worse outcomes. My patients have the additional burden of cancer.

Read More

Sign that reads "Racism is a pandemic too."

Editor’s Choice: Important Reads on Race and Health

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

Racism was embedded in the founding of the United States and has persisted in virtually all aspects of our society through the present day.

In 2020, structural racism was made especially apparent in the disproportionate toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on communities of color, which can be traced back to the social determinants of health, and in grotesque displays of police violence, such as the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain.

Racism is the public health issue of our time, after having been woefully un- or under-addressed for centuries. The following posts, which were published on Bill of Health this year, highlight some of the most pressing issues to confront, as well as potential ways forward.

Read More

Doctor Holding Cell Phone. Cell phones and other kinds of mobile devices and communications technologies are of increasing importance in the delivery of health care. Photographer Daniel Sone.

HHS Recognizes Key Role of Telehealth in Amended PREP Act Declaration

Vrushab Gowda Leave a comment

By Vrushab Gowda

On December 3rd, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) extended its provisions to cover telehealth services in amending its Declaration Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) for Medical Countermeasures Against COVID–19.

This represents the first time HHS has covered telehealth services under the authority of the PREP Act. Telehealth providers are now permitted to deliver a range of COVID-related care across the country, including states in which they do not hold professional licenses. The Declaration, moreover, offers them expansive liability protection, effectively immunizing them against a host of claims in connection to their administration of designated countermeasures.

Read More