Tag: COVID-19

Critical Care Nurse Shortage During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Call for Nurse Anesthesia Students to Bedside

Feb 8, 2021• 1

By TONYCHRIS NNAKA

In March of 2020, when we had limited knowledge on the infectivity and virulence of the virus that causes COVID-19, I joined a team of critical care nurses who were willing to risk their lives to care for those suffering from COVID-19. As a full-time PhD student in nursing, a new parent to my infant son, a primary caregiver to my 73-year-old mother, and as someone with a known history of severe asthma, I knew that I was embarking on a journey that could potentially cost me my professional and personal dreams and endanger those I care for the most in life: my family. My intentions to practice only part-time as a critical care nurse while pursuing full-time studies were halted after only two weeks of managing critically ill COVID-19 patients early in the pandemic. The countless code blues and unprecedented levels of patient deaths made it clear that we were in uncharted territory. After seeing the pain and fear on the faces of my nursing peers, I knew I could never leave them behind in this new battlefield. So, I stayed at bedside full-time for a year while also maintaining my full-time status as a PhD student. I had to. I could not turn my back on my practice oath, or my future professional goals as a nurse scientist. It is in this spirit that, on behalf of myself and my exhausted colleagues, I call on those with critical care experience who have stepped away from bedside to return, as they are able, and answer this same call to action.

The extent of the critical care nursing shortage we are currently experiencing is alarming to me and almost beyond my comprehension. This shortage has forced critical care nurses who have been at bedside since March of last year to remain at bedside even as several of us have reached the breaking point of psychological exhaustion. Our desperate outcry for backup from our fellow critical care nurse colleagues seems to have yielded no outcome. It is obvious that addressing this shortage would require a solution with immediate implementation as we do not have time for the training of more critical care nurses. Thus, an immediate call to all nurse anesthesia students to return to bedside should be a part of any strategy geared towards quickly addressing issues of this critical care nursing shortage.

At a time when the role of critical care registered nurses is most needed, several nurse anesthesia programs continue with their regular admission cycle protocol: pulling critical care nurses away from bedside. At my current hospital, we lost nearly a dozen critical care nurse colleagues to nurse anesthesia programs between March and May of 2020 at the peak of the pandemic. Since the nurse anesthesia program requirements stipulate a minimum of one year of critical care nursing experience, all program applicants possess highly specialized clinical skills needed for the care of critically ill COVID-19 patients. While there are unarguable reasons as to why some nurse anesthesia students have yet to answer this urgent call to duty, we as a profession, and as a society must do what we can to incentivize them to return to bedside to help relieve the suffering of patients and exhausted nurses who have fought tirelessly at the frontlines since the onset of the pandemic – many of whom have lost their lives as a result.

Medable’s CEO: Covid19 Vaccine Will Start Big Pharma’s Era of De-Centralized Clinical Trials

Jan 27, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Covid 19 vaccine development may have mainstreamed questions about how to hasten drug development timelines, but Medable, a health tech startup that offers researchers a way to de-centralize clinical trials, has been working to solve this problem for five years. Freshly funded with a $91M Series C raise, co-founder and CEO Michelle Longmire talks through the benefits of “liberating” clinical trials from academic research centers and sending them onto devices into patient’s homes. Traditionally, drug development processes average more than 10 years, cost millions of dollars, and are limited in the diversity of patients they can recruit because of the heavy focus on the geographic location of the research team conducting the trial. Medable’s digital platform breaks these limitations, reducing drug development timelines and costs by making it easier for researchers to draw study participants from anywhere. More importantly, it makes the novel medicines being tested by the trial available to a bigger, more diverse array of patients. Despite the gains made in 2020 toward the de-centralized clinical trial model (Medable’s revenue shot up 500%), there’s concern that Big Pharma may return to the business processes of old once the pandemic is under control. Does Michelle think last year make enough of an impact to change their business model for good? Find out what’s ahead for the future of pharma.

Catalyst @ Health 2.0 & AFBH Launch Call For COVID-19 Vaccine Scheduling

Jan 22, 2021

By ELIZABETH BROWN

Attention digital health innovators! Do you have a health tech solution that can aid community-based care coordinators in COVID-19 vaccine screening and appointment scheduling for their underserved and vulnerable patients? Apply to the second Alliance for Better Health Rapid Response Open Call, hosted by Catalyst @ Health 2.0 & sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation!

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the importance of ensuring health equity and access is vital. This RROC is looking for solutions to help community care coordinators and providers schedule appointments for COVID-19 vaccines for vulnerable and underserved patients who may be facing barriers to self-scheduling those vaccine appointments. The intended care providers are those working with patients who may lack resources, health literacy, or face other barriers to self-scheduling appointments. A select group of semi-finalists will have the opportunity to demo their technology. A grand prize winner will receive $15k and the opportunity to collaborate with Alliance for Better Health!

Do you have a solution that can fit this need? Apply HERE today! Applications close 2/2.

(This is the second of 2 COVID-19 RROC challenges from Alliance for Better Health. The first was for vaccine administration tracking announced on Tuesday 19th. Both are mentioned in the video from Jacob Reider, Alliance for Better Health’s CEO, which you can see below)

CEO Jacob Reider introduces the challenges

About Alliance For Better Health: Alliance For Better Health engages medical and social service providers in developing innovative solutions to promote people’s health, with a goal of transforming the care delivery system into one that incentivizes health and prevention. Established in 2015 as a Performing Provider System in the New York State Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program (DSRIP), Alliance partners with more than 2,000 providers and organizations across a six-county area in New York’s Tech Valley and Capital Region.

Elizabeth Brown is a Program Manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

Restorative Justice: Don’t Presume “We’re Better Than This”

Jan 21, 2021• 2

By MIKE MAGEE

“We’re better than this” is the common refrain heard from many political leaders following the deadly assault on our democracy on January 6th. We hear empty appeals for blind appeasement from the likes of Kevin McCarthy in the interest of “bringing our country together.” But for those of us who study medical history, pursuing this course takes our nation in exactly the wrong direction.

Rather, the model we must follow is the model of Germany in 1945, or South Africa in 1995. In both cases, strict legal and public accountability (retributive justice) were married with fundamental expansion of universal social services to rebuild confidence and trust in their government’s ability to assure safety and security, and an equal playing field for all of their citizens (restorative justice).

In sorting through the legacy of Hitler’s regime in Germany, the Allied forces established the International Military Tribunal. One of the series of trials, opened on November 19, 1945 in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, delved into egregious examples of medical criminality, including Nazi experimentation on human subjects. These trials are often cited as an example of “retributive justice.” Of 23 defendants, 7 were hanged, 7 acquitted, and the rest given sentences of from 10 years to life in prison.

These judgments were conducted under the direction of U.S. judges and prosecutors and fully compliant with U.S. standards of criminal procedure. Yet another 25 years would pass before any of the 10 agreed-upon medical ethics research standards were integrated into US trial law.

Catalyst @ Health 2.0 & AFBH Launch Call For COVID-19 Vaccine Administration Tracking

Jan 19, 2021

By ELIZABETH BROWN

Attention digital health innovators! Do you have a tracking tool that can assist public health care providers in managing the two-phased COVID-19 vaccination administration? Apply to the Alliance For Better Health Rapid Response Open Call for Vaccination Administration Tracking!

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the importance of ensuring health equity in #COVID19 vaccination administration for vulnerable and underserved populations is increasingly critical. Catalyst @ Health 2.0 is proud to host a Rapid Response Open Call (RROC) in collaboration with Alliance For Better Health. A select group of semi-finalists will have the opportunity to demo their technology. A grand prize winner will receive $15k and the opportunity to collaborate with Alliance For Better Health!

Do you have a solution that can fit this need? Apply HERE today! Applications close 1/31.

(This is the first of 2 COVID-19 RROC challenges from Alliance for Better Health. The second will be announced on Thursday 21st but is mentioned in the video from Jacob Reider below)

CEO Jacob Reider introduces the challenges

Elizabeth Brown is a Program Manager at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The Year When Everything Changed: Covid, Self Care and High Tech Innovation In Medicine

Dec 14, 2020

By HANS DUVEFELT

Life as we knew it and medicine as we had viewed it shapeshifted so dramatically in the past year that it is still hard to believe.

Medicine has started to move from an in-person only profession to one that finally recognizes that clinical assessment and treatment have fewer boundaries than people assumed. A patient of mine with newly diagnosed mastocytosis had a productive first consultation with an immunologist hundreds of miles away right from her own living room.

Efficiency increased when we could handle straightforward clinical issues electronically, even over the telephone, and still get paid. We were liberated from the perverted and miserly view by insurers that services not delivered in person should be free, as if fast food restaurants couldn’t charge for food at the drive through.

We delivered more virtual services to allow patients the safety of staying at home and avoiding lobbies, waiting rooms and exam rooms where airborne particles might linger.

Yet, when a primary care or mental health patient is in crisis or a person with new symptoms needs to be evaluated, a video visit is sometimes not enough. Step by step, we improvised screening protocols, not knowing which would be efficient or relevant as we didn’t know quite how the coronavirus behaved and transmitted.

What, Us Worry

Nov 25, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

2020 has been an awful year. Hurricanes, wildfires, murder hornets, unjustified shootings, a divisive Presidential election, and, of course, a pandemic. Most of us are spending unprecedented amounts of time sheltering in place, millions have lost their jobs, the economy is sputtering, and over a quarter million of us didn’t survive to Thanksgiving. If you haven’t been depressed at some point, you haven’t been paying enough attention.

Within the last two weeks, though, there has finally been some cause for hope. Whether you want to credit Operation Warp Speed or just science doing what it does, we are on the cusp of having vaccines to battle COVID-19. First Pfizer/BioNTech, then Moderna, and most recently, AstraZenica, announced vaccines that appear to be highly effective.

We’re having our Paul Revere moment, only this time with good news. The vaccines are coming! The vaccines are coming!

It strikes me, though, that our enthusiasm about these vaccines says a lot about why the U.S. has had such a hard time with the pandemic; indeed, it tells us a lot about why our healthcare system is in the state it is. We’re suckers for the quick fix, the medical intervention that will bring us health.

Unless you were alive when Woodrow Wilson was President, COVID-19 has been the worst public health crisis of our lifetime. It took some time for us to fully realize how bad it was going to be, and, even then, most of us underestimated exactly how bad that would be. We may still be underestimating how bad these next few months will be.

Can the Government Mandate a Covid-19 Vaccine? Will It Have To?

Nov 23, 2020• 1

By PHILLIP MEYLAN

With the emergence of two vaccines with high levels of effectiveness, there’s a strong prospect of having powerful new tools to combat Covid-19 in the months ahead. But the road between a vaccine and society returning to normal is far from certain. Millions of doses will need to be produced and intelligently distributed, and critically, people must be willing to take them. The last few months have seen already-low confidence in such a vaccine fall even further, with just two-thirds of Americans expressing a willingness to be vaccinated when one becomes available. Similar trends are playing out globally.

Bringing the pandemic under control will likely require successfully vaccinating 60–70% of the population to halt community transmission. Vaccine skepticism puts rapidly reaching that goal in jeopardy. Can the government at the state or federal level mandate vaccination? What is motivating this growing skepticism in Covid vaccination and how might those sentiments shift over time? This week, Phillip looked at 28 articles from 24 sources to explore likely pathways toward vaccination, as well as related vaccine skepticism.

RWJF Emergency Response Challenge Results!

Nov 20, 2020

by MATTHEW HOLT

Yesterday Catalyst @ Health 2.0 hosted the finals of the RWJF Emergency Response Challenges, one for tools for the General Public and the other for the Health System. It was a great session, sadly virtual and not at a conference with cocktails afterwards. But the promise of the tools that have been built as part of these challenges is immense in the battle against this COVID-19 pandemic and the ones yet to come.

The finalists for the General Public challenge were

Binformed Covidata– A clinically-driven comprehensive desktop + mobile infectious disease, epidemic + pandemic management tool targeting suppression and containment of diseases such as COVID-19. The presenter was veteran health IT expert Rick Peters.
CovidSMS– A text message-based platform providing city-specific information and resources to help low-income communities endure COVID-19. In contrast to Rick, CovidSMS’ team were undergraduates at Johns Hopkins led by Serena Wang
Fresh EBT by Propel– A technology tool for SNAP families to address food insecurity & economic vulnerability in times of crisis – highlighted by Michael Lewis on his Against the Rules podcast about coaching earlier this year. Stacey Taylor, head of partnerships for Propel presented their solutions for those in desperate need.

The finalists for the Health System challenge were

PathCheck– A non profit just spun out of MIT. It has a raft of volunteers and well known advisors like John Brownstein and John Halamka among many others, and is already working with several states and countries. Pathcheck provides privacy first, free, open source solutions for public health to supplement manual contact tracing, visualize hot spots, and interface with citizen-facing privacy first apps. MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar was the presenter.
Qventus– A patient flow automation solution that applies AI / ML and behavioral science to help health systems create effective capacity, and reduce frontline burnout. Qventus is a great data analytics startup story. It’s raised over $45m and has lots of health system clients, and they have built a suite of new tools to help them with pandemic preparedness. Anthony Moorman, who won the best facial hair of the day award, showed the demo.
Tiatros Inc– A mental health and social support platform that combines clinical expertise, peer communities and scalable technology to advance mental wellbeing and to sustain meaningful behavioral change. They’ve done a lot of work with soldiers with PTSD and as you’ll see entered this challenge to get their tools to another group of extremely stressed professionals–frontline health care workers. CEO Kimberlie Cerrone and COO Seth Norman jointly presented.

Videos of the whole session and the demos will be up soon.

And the winners were…

A tie in General Public challenge between CovidSMS & BInformed, who split the $25,000 first prize (and the $10,000 second prize!)

Qventus in the Health System challenge who take home $25,000

But there were no losers. A great culmination of a lot of work to get tech solutions to help us deal with the pandemic.

Matthew Holt is Publisher of THCB and also Co-Chairman at Catalyst @ Health 2.0

Women Leaders Increasingly Visible In The Fight Against Covid-19

Nov 19, 2020• 2

By MIKE MAGEE, MD

As we struggle to control a second wave of Covid-19, we are reminded once again of the nurses and doctors who place themselves at risk willingly and consistently. They are struggling uphill with a deeply segmented health care system that chronically rewards the have’s over the have-not’s, and a President clearly intent on creating as much havoc as is humanly possible on the way out the door.

Filling the leadership void this week, we witnessed the unusual appearance on network television of two national leaders from the professions of Nursing and Medicine, Dr. Susan Bailey (President, AMA) and Debbie Hatmaker (Chief Nursing Officer, ANA) appearing in tandem.

The united front presented by these two women leaders was reassuring. They didn’t pull punches, but spoke truth to power, describing the nation’s condition as “very grim” and “quite stark.”

In many ways, their joint appearance was a reflection of a changing reality in communities large and small across America. A Medscape survey released this week found that women’s roles in health care are growing in leaps and bounds. For example, in Family Medicine, close to 40% of the physicians are now women, and they work approximately the same number of hours per week as their male counterparts.

These women doctors are increasingly working in team settings. The majority of Family Physicians (71%) now work within a team that includes either a Nurse Practitioner (NP) or Physician’s Assistant (PA).