Tag: Kim Bellard

Defund Health Care!

Jun 9, 2020• 2

By KIM BELLARD

In the wake of the protests related to George Floyd’s death, there have been many calls to “defund police.” Those words come as a shock to many people, some of whom can’t imagine even reducing police budgets, much less abolishing entire police departments, as a few advocates do indeed call for.

If we’re talking about institutions that are supposed to protect us but too often cause us harm, maybe we should be talking about defunding health care as well.

America loves the police. They’re like mom and apple pie; not supporting them is essentially seen as being unpatriotic. Until recent events, it’s been political suicide to try to attack police budgets. It’s much easier for politicians to urge more police, with more hardware, even military grade, while searching for budget cuts that will attract less attention.

It remains to be seen whether the current climate will actually lead to action, but there are faint signs of change. The mayor of Los Angeles has promised to cut $150 million from its police budget, the New York City mayor vowed to cut some of its $6b police budget, and the Minneapolis City Council voted to “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department,” perhaps spurred by seeing the mayor do a “walk of shame” of jeers from protesters when he would not agree to even defunding it.

THCB Gang, Episode 12

Jun 5, 2020

Episode 12 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Friday, June 5th from 1PM PT to 4PM ET. If you didn’t have a chance to tune in, you can watch it below or on our YouTube Channel.

Editor-in-Chief, Zoya Khan (@zoyak1594), ran the show! She spoke to economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker), executive & mentor Andre Blackman (@mindofandre), writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), MD-turned entrepreneur Jean-Luc Neptune (@jeanlucneptune), and patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano). The conversation focused on health disparities seen in POC communities across the nation and ideas on how the system can make impactful changes across the industry, starting with executive leadership and new hires. It was an informative and action-oriented conversation packed with bursts of great facts and figures.

If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version it is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels a day or so after the episode — Matthew Holt

We Can’t Breathe

Jun 3, 2020• 4

By KIM BELLARD

I was wondering what might crowd COVID-19 off the news. The historic economic devastation caused by it has been subsumed into it, just another casualty of the pandemic. In better times, perhaps SpaceX’s efforts would inspire us. But, no, it took the police killing of yet another person of color to take our attention away.

Now, let me say right off that I am not the best person to discuss George Floyd’s death and the woeful pattern it is part of. I have certainly been the beneficiary of white male privilege. I’ve never been unjustly pulled over or arrested. I haven’t taken part in the protests. But people like me need to speak out. Writing about anything else right now seems almost irresponsible.

OK: you’ve seen the video. You’ve heard Mr. Floyd protest that he can’t breathe, that the officer was killing him. You’ve seen other officers stand by and not do anything — some even assisting — even as bystanders pleaded for them to let Mr. Floyd breathe. It’s disturbing, it’s distressing, and it’s nothing new.

I saw a video from one of the resulting protests where another officer restrained a protester — a black man, of course — in exactly the same way, although in this case another officer eventually moved the officer’s knee off the protester’s neck. He’d learned what that video looked like.

There now have been protests in over 140 U.S. cities, with the National Guard mobilized in almost half the states. Most protests have been peaceful, but there has been looting and there have been shootings. It’s a level of civil unrest not seen since the 1960’s.

And we thought it was bad when we just wanted the grocery stores to have toilet paper again, when wearing a mask was considered a hardship.

THCB Gang, Episode 11

May 28, 2020

Episode 11 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, May 27th and you can see it again below

Joining me were three regulars, patient safety expert Michael Millenson (MLMillenson), writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), and two new guests: digital health investment banker Steven Wardell (@StevenWardell) and MD turned physician leadership coach Maggi Cary (@MargaretCaryMD)! The conversation was heavy on telemedicine and value based care, and their impact on the stock-market, the economy and the health care system–all in a week when we went over 100,000 deaths from COVID-19.

If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Matthew Holt

The 2020 COVID Election

May 27, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

Many believe that the 2020 Presidential election will be a referendum on how President Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Some believe that is why the President is pushing so hard to reopen the economy, so that he can reclaim it as the focal point instead. I fear that the pandemic will, indeed, play a major role in the election, but not quite in the way we’re openly talking about.

It’s about there being fewer Democrats.

Now, let me say right from the start that I am not a conspiracy believer. I don’t believe that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab, or that China deliberately wanted it to spread. I don’t even believe that the Administration’s various delays and bungles in dealing with the pandemic are strategic or even deliberate.

I do believe, though, that people in the Administration and in the Republican party more generally may be seeing how the pandemic is playing out, and feel less incentive to combat it to the fullest extent of their powers. Let’s start with who is dying, where.

Home, Sweet Work

May 20, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

If you’re lucky, you’ve been working from home these past couple months. That is, you’re lucky you’re not one of the 30+ million people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. That is, you’re lucky you’re not an essential worker whose job has required you to risk exposure to COVID-19 by continuing to go into your workplace.

What’s interesting is that many of the stay-at-home workers, and the companies they work for, are finding it a surprisingly suitable arrangement. And that has potentially major implications for our society, and, not coincidentally, for our healthcare system.

Twitter was one of the first to announce that it wouldn’t care if workers continued to work from home. “Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs,” a company spokesperson wrote in a blog post. “So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”

Other tech companies are also letting the work-from-home experiment continue. According to The Washington Post, Amazon and Microsoft have told such workers they can keep working from home until at least October, while Facebook and Google say at least until 2021. Microsoft president Brad Smith observed: “We found that we can sustain productivity to a very high degree with people working from home.”

Keep Petri Dishes in the Lab

May 12, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

COVID-19 is changing the landscape of our healthcare system, and, indeed, of our entire society, in ways that we hadn’t been prepared for and with implications that we won’t fully grasp for some time. As we grapple with how to reshape our healthcare system and our society in the wake of the pandemic, though, I worry we’re going to focus on the wrong problems.

Take, for example, nursing homes, prisons, and the meatpacking industry.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the pandemic will recognize that each of these have been “hot spots,” and have been called “petri dishes” for coronavirus (as are cruise ships, but that’s a different article). These institutions aren’t the only places where masses of people congregate, but they seem to do so in ways that create fertile territories for COVID-19. And that’s the problem.

We knew early on that nursing homes were going to be a problem. We knew COVID-19 was a problem in Wuhan, but that was far away — until a few cases emerged in late February in a skilled nursing home in King County, Washington. We know now that these were not the first cases, nor the first deaths, but we were stunned by how quickly it spread in that facility. By mid-March experts were already calling nursing homes “ground zero,” and that has been proven right.

It is now estimated that as many as a third of all U.S. coronavirus deaths have come from nursing home residents or workers. That is (as of this writing) almost 30,000 deaths, and over 150,000 cases.

THCB Gang: Episode 8 LIVE 1PM PT/4PM ET, 5/7

May 7, 2020

Episode 8 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, May 7th at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! You can see it below.

Joining me were our regulars: patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), data privacy lawyer Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy), policy expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), radiologist Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad) (who snuck in late), and writer Kim Bellard (@Kimbbellard). We had a great conversation including a lot of detail around access to patient records, and some fun about infectious disease epidemiologists behaving badly! If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels from Friday— Matthew Holt

Healthcare Starts to Zoom Along

May 6, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

A year ago, if you’d used or even heard about Zoom, you were probably in the tech industry. Today, if you haven’t used Zoom, your friends or colleagues must not like you very much. COVID-19 has made most of us homebound most of the time, and video services like Zoom are helping make that more bearable.

And, thankfully, healthcare is finally paying attention.

Zoom was founded in 2011, poking along under the radar for several years, overshadowed by competitors like Skype or WebEx. For the entire month of May 2013 it only had a million meeting participants. Even by December 2019 it could boast “only” 10 million daily users.

Then — boom — COVID-19 hits and people start staying at home. Daily users skyrocketed to 200 million in March and as many as 300 million in April (well, not quite). Daily downloads went from 56,000 in January 2020 to over 2 million in April. Zoom is now used by businesses and families alike, drawn by its simplicity and ease of use.

By all rights, we should be using WebEx for business video calls and Skype for personal ones. Both had been around longer, offered credible services, and still exist. But both were acquired along the way, WebEx by Cisco, and Skype ultimately by Microsoft. As with its acquisition of Nokia, once acquired Microsoft didn’t quite seem to know what to do with it. Each left openings that Zoom plunged through when the pandemic hit.

Hiding Our Heads in the Sand

Apr 28, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

There are so many stories about the coronavirus pandemic — some inspiring, some tragic, and all-too-many frustrating. In the world’s supposedly most advanced economy, we’ve struggled to produce enough ventilators, tests, even swabs, for heaven’s sake.

I can’t stop thinking about infrastructure, especially unemployment systems.

We’d never purposely shut down our economy; no nation had. Each state is trying to figure out the best course between limiting exposure to COVID-19 and keeping food on people’s tables. Those workers deemed “essential” still show up for work, others may be able to work from home, but many have suddenly become unemployed.

The U.S. is seeing unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, and occuring in a matter of a couple months, not several years. As of this writing, there are over 22 million unemployed; no one believes that is a complete count (not everyone qualifies for unemployment), and few believe that will be the peak.

Many unemployment systems could not manage the flood of applications.