By Katie Gu
Mifepristone’s shifting legal terrain may soon raise new privacy considerations regarding telemedicine data collection, security, and disclosure.
Tag: telemedicine
FDA Expands Medication Abortion Access During Pandemic, but State Barriers Remain
By Adrienne R. Ghorashi, Esq.
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suspended an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing patients to access medication abortion by mail.
Previously, the FDA REMS requirement mandated that mifepristone must be dispensed in person, forcing patients to travel to a clinic in order to pick up the medication. In light of the pandemic, the requirement would lead to unnecessary risks of COVID exposure for patients and providers, in addition to imposing logistical and financial burdens.
This FDA decision is the latest development in a battle that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. In its first abortion decision since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the bench, the Supreme Court reinstated the in-person dispensing requirement after it had previously been blocked by a federal district court in Maryland due to the risks of COVID-19.
Advocates for abortion access are celebrating the FDA decision as a win for science and evidence-based policy rooted in a growing body of research on the benefits of medication abortion and telemedicine for abortion.
How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Changed Caregiver Education and Training
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.
Telehealth and the Future of Long-Term Care
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.
Viewing Telehealth Policymaking Through the Lens of Disability
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.
Scope Creep: Serving Many Roles, Health Care Providers Need a Supporting Cast
By Christian Rose
During the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians and nurses have found themselves on the frontlines of more than just medical care, advocating for their patients, their families, and themselves. Facing overwhelm and burnout at a scale hitherto unimagined, they continue to fulfill their ethical obligations to their communities and their patients. If they don’t, who will?
Providing Cancer Care in the Age of COVID-19
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.
Beyond 20/20: The Post-COVID Future of Health Care
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.
Pandemic Lays Bare Shortcomings of Health Care Institutions
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.
Clash of Titans? A Brewing Dispute between Telehealth Giants
By Vrushab Gowda
Competition between rival telehealth providers spilled into open conflict last month, as incumbent Teladoc Health, Inc. (Teladoc) filed a patent infringement suit against relative upstart American Well Corporation (Amwell).
This development marks a significant escalation in what has been a lengthy arms race between the two publicly traded entities. Both having witnessed skyrocketing sales in recent months, aided by a shift to virtual care and a host of regulatory flexibilities, although neither has turned a profit to date.