Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Hospitals Will Lose $320B This Year From COVID-19, AHA Report Says
Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Will Take $320B Hit This Year, AHA Says
Hospitals and health systems will lose over $320 billion in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an American Hospital Association report Tuesday. More than $200 billion in financial losses occurred from March to June. But the AHA expects hospitals to lose another $120 billion—about $20 billion per month—through year-end, mostly driven by lower patient volumes. (Brady, 6/30)
Stat: Hospitals Tap AI To Nudge Clinicians Toward End-Of-Life Conversations
The daily email that arrived in physician Samantha Wang’s inbox at 8 a.m., just before morning rounds, contained a list of names and a warning: These patients are at high risk of dying within the next year. One name that turned up again and again belonged to a man in his 40s, who had been admitted to Stanford University’s hospital the previous month with a serious viral respiratory infection. He was still much too ill to go home, but Wang was a bit surprised that the email had flagged him among her patients least likely to be alive in a year’s time. (Robbins, 7/1)
Kaiser Health News: Among Those Disrupted By COVID-19: The Nation’s Newest Doctors
July 1 is a big day in medical education. It’s traditionally the day newly minted doctors start their first year of residency. But this year is different. Getting from here to there — from medical school to residency training sites — has been complicated by the coronavirus. “We were all really freaking out,” said Dr. Christine Petrin, who just graduated from medical school at Tulane University in New Orleans and is starting a combined residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Students “matched” — the term for finding out where they will spend their next several years training — in March, just as everything was shutting down because of the pandemic. (Rovner, 7/1)
Boston Globe: Boston Neighborhood Health Centers Complete Merger
After a year spent clearing one regulatory hurdle after another, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center has completed its takeover of South End Community Health Center. The coronavirus pandemic has changed much in the health care world since the deal was announced in June 2019, but not the rationale for the combination: to maintain the much-smaller South End center’s ability to deliver primary care, mental health care, and other services, mostly to poor and uninsured patients. (Edelman, 7/1)
