Tag: Tom Frieden

The COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge Webinar

Sep 4, 2020

By INDU SUBAIYA & FARZAD MOSTASHARI

Following the launch of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge on September 1st, we are excited to host a dedicated webinar providing further insights into the Challenge directly from key leaders representing our partner organizations at Facebook Data for Good, the Delphi Group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Joint Program on Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland (UMD), the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, and Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies.

A stellar line up of speakers includes a raft of former government officials Mark McClellan (FDA & CMA), Tom Frieden (CDC), Farzad Mostashari (ONC) and many more, including Johns Hopkins’ Professor Caitlin Rivers, Carnegie Mellon’s Alex Reinhart & Facebook’s Head of Health Kang-Xing Jin.

If you are applying to the Challenge or would like to hear more about experts’ responses to COVID-19 and the importance of data during the pandemic, you do not want to miss this conversation!

We will be discussing the following
- Shortcomings of the existing tools for COVID-19 surveillance in the US
- The case for better situational awareness of COVID activity
- Overview of Symptom Data survey methodology
- Preliminary analyses relating symptom trends to COVID intensity
- Goals and operation of the Symptom Data Challenge

Tune in on Tuesday, September 8th at 1-2pm ET!

Event Registration Link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6102626394063911951

Indu Subaiya is President of Catalyst @ Health 2.0. Farzad Mostashari is CEO of Aledade and Chair of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge

Hospital at Center of Ebola Outbreak Reverses Its Story

Oct 6, 2014• 19

By THCBist

The Dallas hospital at the center of the Texas Ebola outbreak has changed its story.

Last Thursday, the hospital blamed a poorly designed electronic medical record for the failure to diagnose Duncan when he arrived at the hospital’s emergency room with symptoms consistent with Ebola, including a fever, stomach cramps and headache. According to the initial story, a badly designed electronic health record workflow made it difficult for doctors to see details of Duncan’s West African travel. Duncan was sent home. Very bad things happened as a result, as we all know by now.

On Friday, the hospital reversed itself without explanation.

The new statement:

Clarification: We would like to clarify a point made in the statement released earlier in the week. As a standard part of the nursing process, the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (EHR), including within the physician’s workflow. There was no flaw in the EHR in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event. [ Full text ]

In other words: The EMR didn’t do it.

When the EMR story came out Thursday, critics jumped all over it. It did sort of make sense to some people, especially people who aren’t fans of electronic medical records. The idea that a piece of key information could get lost in the maze of screens and pop ups and clicks in a complex medical record sounded plausible.

A lot of other people weren’t buying it:

The swiftness of the hasty retreat led some critics to speculate that Texas Health’s statement Thursday provoked the wrath of EPIC, the hospital’s EMR vendor. Industry critics pointed out that many major EMR vendors, EPIC among them, often include strongly worded clauses in contracts that forbids customers from talking publicly about their products.

After this story was posted, EPIC contacted THCB with a response via email. Company spokesman Shawn Kieseau wrote:

We have no gag clauses in our contracts. We had no legal input or participation in our root cause analysis discussions with Texas Health staff on this issue. Texas Health’s correction is appropriate given the facts in this situation.

The End of Antibiotics. Can We Come Back from the Brink?

May 5, 2014• 38

By Tom Frieden, MD

Antibiotic resistance — bacteria outsmarting the drugs designed to kill them — is already here, threatening to return us to the time when simple infections were often fatal. How long before we have no effective antibiotics left?

It’s painfully easy for me to imagine life in a post-antibiotic era. I trained as an internist and infectious disease physician before there was effective treatment for HIV, and I later cared for patients with tuberculosis resistant to virtually all antibiotics.

We improvised, hoped, and, all too often, were only able to help patients die more comfortably.

To quote Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization: “A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it.”

We’d have to rethink our approach to many advances in medical treatment such as joint replacements, organ transplants and cancer therapy, as well as improvements in treating chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis and other immunological disorders.

Treatments for these can increase the risk of infections, and we may no longer be able to assume that we will have effective antibiotics for these infections.

Last September, CDC published our first report on the current antibiotic resistance threat to the United States.

The report conservatively estimates that each year, at least 2 million Americans become infected with bacteria resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 die. Another 14,000 Americans die each year with the complications of C. difficile, a bacterial infection most often made possible by use of antibiotics. WHO has just issued their report on the global impact of this health threat.

It’s a big problem, and one that’s getting worse. But it’s not too late. We can delay, and even in some cases reverse the spread of antibiotic resistance.

CDC: Together We Can Provide Safer Patient Care

Mar 4, 2014• 32

By Tom Frieden, MD

There are many stories of patients who suffer when we make errors prescribing antibiotics. 75-year-old Bob Totsch from Coshocton, Ohio, went in for heart bypass surgery with every expectation of a good outcome.

Instead, he developed a surgical site infection caused by MRSA. Given a variety of antibiotics, he developed the deadly diarrheal infection C. difficile, went into septic shock, and died.

A tragic story and, probably, a preventable death.

Today, we’ve published a report about the need to improve antibiotic prescribing in hospitals. Antibiotic resistance is one of the most urgent health threats facing us today. Antibiotics can save lives.

But when they’re not prescribed correctly, they put patients at risk for preventable allergic reactions, resistant infections, and deadly diarrhea. And they become less likely to work in the future.

About half of hospital patients receive an antibiotic during the course of their stay. But doctors in some hospitals prescribe three times more antibiotics than doctors in other hospitals, even though patients were receiving care in similar areas of each hospital.

Among 26 medical-surgical wards, there were 3-fold differences in prescribing rates of all antibiotics, including antibiotics that place patients at high risk for developing Clostridium difficile infections (CDI).

CDC has estimated that there are about 250,000 CDIs in hospitalized patients each year resulting in 14,000 deaths.

Data Points: CDC Numbers Show Fewer Americans Have Trouble Paying Medical Bills

Jun 9, 2013• 2

By Tom Frieden, MD

CDC’s report, Problems Paying Medical Bills: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January 2011-June 2012, provides some encouraging news. The data show fewer Americans have trouble paying their medical bills.

Among adults between the ages of 18-64, the percentage of those in families that have problems paying medical bills decreased from 20.9 percent in the first half of 2011, to 19.7 percent in the first half of 2012. The news was also encouraging for teens and children 17 and younger living in families with problems paying medical bills. The percentage of these decreased from 23.7 percent to 21.8 percent for the same period.

While the report provides good news, far too many Americans still find it burdensome to access medical services.

This is why the Affordable Care Act was passed. The law helps Americans with their medical bills in several ways. It requires many insurers to cover certain preventive services at no out of pocket cost to patients. Because of the law, 71 million Americans are receiving expanded coverage of preventive services without co-pays or deductibles — including vaccines, blood pressure and cholesterol tests, mammograms, colonoscopies and screenings for osteoporosis.

The Affordable Care Act has also played a role in helping Americans access the health insurance they need. Since 2010, the law has allowed more than 3.1 million young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26.

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