Viewpoints: Virtual Health Care Is The Future; How To Make Hospital Stays Safer For Patients

Stat: Ensuring Equitable Global Access To Virtual Health Care 
Virtual health capabilities are evolving far beyond video consultations with a doctor. They now encompass a vast array of applications, from bots that screen people for common illnesses to artificial intelligence that can read X-ray images as well as a human radiologist. Many experts see virtual technology as a promising tool for eliminating barriers to health care and addressing long-standing global health inequities. But that promise is far from assured. Many people have no internet access or lack the digital literacy needed to engage remotely with care practitioners or benefit from health-promoting services. (WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Ann Aerts, 6/16)

Stat: Gains In Patient Safety Have Stalled Over The Past Decade 
Hospital care helps patients recover from serious illness and injury but, all too often, patients can also be harmed by it. In 2010, our office, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS-OIG), reported that 27% of Medicare beneficiaries experienced harm during hospital stays. These harms were uncovered through an extensive medical record review by nurses and physicians trained in patient safety. They included temporary events such as low blood pressure that can cause falls and other problems, as well as serious events such as strokes and sepsis, which prolong hospital stays, cause permanent injuries, and, in some cases, contribute to death. Almost half of the harm events identified could have been prevented by better care. (Christi A. Grimm, Ruth Ann Dorrill and Julie K. Taitsman, 6/16)

The Tennessean: HEALS Is The Mental Health Crisis Response Model Nashville Needs
Three years ago, Mayor John Cooper appointed a Policing Commission to make recommendations as to how to proceed with criminal justice issues in Nashville. Two committees on that commission came back with different ways to respond to mental health crisis response situations: A police officer and mental health worker respond in a police car. An E.M.T. and a mental health crisis worker respond in a van. (Joe Ingle, 6/15)

Dallas Morning News: Texas Leaders Want To Boost Mental Health Care. What About A ‘Red Flag’ Law?
Progress can be slow to reach the halls of the state Capitol, so we are glad to see Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan treat mental health care as a priority in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre. Any sincere legislative effort to prevent more school mass shootings has to address gun violence. But mental health is also a factor, and expanded access to care should be an easy consensus builder. (6/16)

The Boston Globe: How To Spur Scientific Breakthroughs
If you’ve ever used an insulin pump, an over-the-counter pregnancy test, or a dose of remdesivir for COVID, you’ve benefited from interdisciplinary science. And that’s only in medicine — cross-pollination also gave us smartphones and AI-driven software. As we face multiple world crises, from climate destruction to the coronavirus pandemic, cross-collaboration is needed now more than ever — but the way scientists are trained actually makes this type of collaboration harder, if not impossible. (Eric and Wendy Schmidt, 6/16)

Newsweek: Plans To Help Underserved Communities Will Fail Without New Forms Of Community Engagement 
The American health care system, battered by two-plus years of COVID-19, staff burnout and declining public trust, could be forgiven for a period of retrenchment and nostalgia for "the way things used to be." If that happens, however, we will miss the best opportunity in a generation to apply the innovations of the moment to build a better and more just system of care and delivery. (Nancy E. Oriol, 6/15)