Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medical Groups Petition CMS To Lift Infection Penalties
CIDRAP: Med Societies Ask That Healthcare Infection Penalties Be Suspended
Warning that persistent staff and supply shortages in hard-hit hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to disruptions that could result in an increase in drug-resistant hospital infections, the heads of three US medical professional societies last week sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requesting a suspension of reimbursement penalties for healthcare-associated infections (HAIs)."As the number of COVID-19 cases surge, hospitals are becoming overwhelmed with more patients than can be managed with typical care standards," the presidents of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the Society of Infectious Disease Pharmacists (SIDP), and the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) wrote in a Dec 28 letter to HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan. (Dall, 1/4)
AP: Hospital COVID-19 Outbreak Remains Under Investigation
A top health official said Monday he doesn’t know how a COVID-19 outbreak spread to 30 patients and employees at a Vancouver hospital. The cause of the December outbreak at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center remains under investigation, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. But Dr. Lawrence Neville, chief medical center for PeaceHealth Columbia Network, said the hospital’s COVID-19 cluster can be traced to one patient who initially tested negative only to test positive days later. (1/5)
KHN and The Guardian: Covid ‘Decimated Our Staff’ As The Pandemic Ravages Health Workers Of Color In US
Last spring, New Jersey emergency room nurse Maritza Beniquez saw “wave after wave” of sick patients, each wearing a look of fear that grew increasingly familiar as the weeks wore on. Soon, it was her colleagues at Newark’s University Hospital — the nurses, techs and doctors with whom she had been working side by side — who turned up in the ER, themselves struggling to breathe. “So many of our own co-workers got sick, especially toward the beginning; it literally decimated our staff,” she said. By the end of June, 11 of Beniquez’s colleagues were dead. Like the patients they had been treating, most were Black and Latino. (Renwick, 1/5)
The Washington Post: ER Doctors On The Front Lines Against Covid Struggle To Find Jobs
Owais Durrani does not have a job, a predicament that would have been almost unthinkable for a doctor with his skills a year ago.At University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he is training in emergency medicine, Durrani has treated hundreds of covid-19 patients. He has dosed them with steroids, given them oxygen and carefully turned them onto their bellies to relieve respiratory distress. ... Despite all that, the 29-year-old doctor cannot find a company in his hometown of Houston ready to hire him when he graduates next year. (Guarino, 1/4)
Also —
KHN: Hospital Prices Just Got A Lot More Transparent. What Does This Mean For You?
Hospitals face the new year with new requirements to post price information they have long sought to obscure: the actual prices negotiated with insurers and the discounts they offer their cash-paying customers. The move is part of a larger push by the Trump administration to use price transparency to curtail prices and create better-informed consumers. Yet there is disagreement on whether it will do so. (Appleby, 1/5)
Los Angeles Times: Hip Surgeon Lawrence Dorr, Founder Of Operation Walk, Dies
Lawrence Dorr, a surgeon who led early developments in joint replacement surgery and helped make Los Angeles an international destination for the repair of ailing hips and knees, has died at 79. Dorr also started the nonprofit Operation Walk to provide free joint replacement surgery for people in underserved countries such as Cuba, Nepal, and Guatemala. It has grown into an international charity. He retired from Keck Hospital of USC last year after a career spanning more than five decades. He died Dec. 28 in that same hospital from complications of bacterial pneumonia, his longtime nurse Jeri Ward said. (Vincent, 1/4)
