Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
VA Says It Stands Ready To Offer Overflow Help For Hospitals Strained By Crisis But Trump Needs To Give Go-Ahead
ProPublica: The Trump Administration Is Leaving The Nation’s Emergency Backup Hospital System On The Sidelines
The Trump administration is leaving untapped reinforcements and supplies from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, even as many hospitals are struggling with a crush of coronavirus patients. The VA serves 9 million veterans through 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, but it’s also legally designated as the country’s backup health system in an emergency. As part of the National Disaster Medical System, the VA has deployed doctors and equipment to disasters and emergencies in recent instances such as Hurricane Maria and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The VA system has 13,000 acute care beds, including 1,800 intensive care unit beds. (Arnsdorf, 3/27)
WBUR: HHS Warns States Not To Put People With Disabilities At The Back Of The Line For Care
With coronavirus cases continuing to climb and hospitals facing the prospect of having to decide how to allocate limited staff and resources, the Department of Health and Human Services is reminding states and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in a pandemic. States are preparing for a situation when there's not enough care to go around by issuing "crisis of care" standards. (Shapiro, 3/28)
Boston Globe: Officials Are Emptying Nursing Homes Across Mass. To Create Coronavirus Recovery Centers
At least a dozen skilled nursing facilities across the state could soon be emptied of their residents and converted to treatment centers for COVID-19 patients to take pressure off nearby hospitals. The first such transition is underway in Worcester, where officials on Saturday began relocating 147 residents from Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center and into a number of other eldercare facilities in Central Massachusetts. (Weisman and Logan, 3/28)
Politico: Hospitals Wrestle With Trump's Call To Scrap Elective Surgeries
Hospitals are still grappling with the Trump administration’s pleas to scrub elective procedures with coronavirus cases mounting, as they try to balance competing demands to protect against the infection and stave off financial catastrophe. Some hospitals were still performing routine surgeries and outpatient procedures this week over the objections of staff who worry that they were putting patients and providers at risk of exposure to the virus. Staff who spoke with POLITICO also said they worried about depleting valuable inventory of personal protective equipment that’s in diminishing supply in many parts of the country. (Rayasam, Goldberg and Roubein, 3/29)
ABC News: In The Middle Of The Coronavirus Crisis, Some Hospitals Fear Financial Ruin
As officials scramble to supply hospitals with much needed protective equipment for doctors and nurses fighting the novel coronavirus on the front lines, hospital leaders around the country warn that they are running low on another critical supply: money. Hospitals have taken a significant loss of revenue as they cut back lucrative elective procedures to free up resources to treat COVID-19 patients. At the same time, they are pouring money into efforts to fight the virus like buying personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies, providing child care for staff and overtime pay, transforming units to COVID-19 wings for treatment and setting up drive-thru testing sites, hospital officials told ABC News. (Rubin and Kim, 3/30)
Kaiser Health News: The Nation’s 5,000 Outpatient Surgery Centers Could Help With The COVID-19 Overflow
As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise, a group of anesthesiologists wants to convert America’s surgery centers into critical care units for infected patients. Many of the country’s more than 5,000 outpatient surgery centers have closed or sharply cut back on the number of elective procedures they perform, to comply with requests from government agencies and professional societies. But those surgery centers have space and staff, as well as anesthesia machines that could be repurposed into ventilators — all of which could be especially crucial in hard-hit areas like New York. (Anthony and Szabo, 3/27)
Philadelphia Inquirer: Philadelphia-Area Hospitals Brace For The Coronavirus Surge: ‘We Are No More Than 2 Weeks Behind N.Y.C.'
Across the United States, hospitals have been dealing with a disease disaster made worse by the federal government’s failure to act in the early weeks, when better containment might have been possible. Now, with U.S. case numbers exploding, testing is still a bottleneck, and there is a dire shortage of everything from low-tech face masks to high-tech ventilators. In New York City, a doctor at a hospital with 13 deaths in one day told the New York Times just days ago that the situation was “apocalyptic.” (McCullough and Gartner, 3/27)
The Wall Street Journal: Needing Room For Coronavirus Patients, Massachusetts Seeks To Clear Out Some Nursing Homes
Massachusetts is asking some nursing homes to evacuate their elderly residents so the facilities can treat coronavirus patients, the newest effort to find places to treat the infected as their surging numbers begin overwhelming hospitals. One nursing home in Worcester, the state’s second-largest city, has begun moving residents to other nursing facilities in the area. The state also said it is asking other homes to become dedicated sites for coronavirus treatment by similarly transferring residents. (Kamp and Wilde Mathews, 3/29)
