Communication

May 20, 2020

Virus may upend hospitals’ finances, but not dubious Big Pharma behavior

When it comes to aggravating parties in the U.S. health care system, a certain French phrase captures an uncomfortable reality: “Plus ça change” — as in plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose or “The more it changes, the more it stays the same.”

We can see that here:

Big Pharma, even in the midst of a pandemic, knows how to play politics, maximize its profits, and challenge regulators to the max while doing so.

May 19, 2020

Tough choices loom for all of us as states ease public-health restrictions

by Patrick A. Malone

Do I, or don’t I? Do we, or don’t we?

As the stringent public health measures designed to bend the curve with the Covid-19 pandemic begin to lift or ease — including in Maryland and Virginia — hundreds of millions of Americans will make difficult individual decisions about their lives and livelihoods.

Fears are high that going back too soon may result in a deadly second wave of infections and deaths. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a preeminent expert on epidemics and a leader at the National Institutes of Health, warned senators of serious consequences from a premature restarting of activities.

May 17, 2020

As nursing home toll rises, many U.S. and state responses fall to new lows

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal and state officials almost seem as if they are competing with each other to race to new lows in their wrong-headed failure to protect elderly, sick, and injured Americans who require institutional care and whose health and lives are being savaged by the novel coronavirus.

An estimated 1.5 million Americans live in long-term institutions, including nursing homes, assisted living centers, skilled nursing facilities, memory care hospitals and the like. Covid-19 has taken a terrible toll on these frail, chronically ill, or seriously injured and debilitated people with more than 27,000 residents and staff dying from the novel coronavirus — roughly a third of all the disease fatalities nationwide. A third of the coronavirus deaths in the District of Columbia have been in skilled nursing facilities, while 40% of the Covid-19 deaths in California, the nation’s largest state, have been in nursing homes.

In the latest baffling response, President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence both suddenly have “recommended” that states get nursing homes and other similar facilities to step up the testing of residents and staff. They did not make this common-sense step mandatory, nor did they offer any word on how the federal government could help achieve this. As the Associated Press reported:

May 15, 2020

Researchers digging in to discover how novel coronavirus affects youngsters

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal officials have launched what may be an aptly named, important, and reassuring study for kids, parents, families, and communities — the large-scale “Heros” investigation on Covid-19 and youngsters.

As the National Institutes of Health explains the “Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2” work:

“[It will] help determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in children and their family members in the United States [and] will help determine what percentage of children infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, develop symptoms of the disease. In addition, the HEROS study will examine whether rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection differ between children who have asthma or other allergic conditions and children who do not.”

May 14, 2020

Ohio State Buckeyes will pay $41 million to settle some claims over twisted team doctor

by Patrick A. Malone

The Buckeyes have become the latest in a sad, expanding list of colleges, universities, and other institutions to reach big settlements over students’ long sexual abuse by twisted medical staffers, with Ohio State University agreeing to pay $41 million to 162 male athletes for two decades of molestation and mistreatment by a team doctor.

After years of complaints and an outside investigation by a prominent law firm, OSU fessed up and said it should have done far more to listen to aggrieved wrestlers, football players, and others as they told coaches and other adults about the perverse conduct about assaults committed by Richard H. Strauss, a doctor to various men’s sports teams and professor from 1978 to 1998. He died by suicide in 2005.

During his time, students would testify to university trustees and investigators, the doctor’s inappropriate transgressions included activities that “ranged from groping to requiring them to strip unnecessarily to asking them questions about their sexual behavior under the guise of medical treatment,” the New York Times reported.

May 13, 2020

New hospitals may offer hope to D.C.’s poor, minority areas as Covid-19 rages

by Patrick A. Malone

Even as the Covid-19 pandemic shows the terrible toll inflicted on African Americans in the District of Columbia by health care disparities, city officials have announced they are advancing with a pricey plan to plug a giant hole in area medical services by helping to fund not one but two new hospitals that will serve impoverished communities of color.

The facilities will be in Wards 1 and 8 and will replace the Howard University Hospital and the United Medical Center (UMC) in Southeast D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed.

The City Council in the days ahead will consider her latest $700 million or so plan to try to improve medical services for some of the poorest residents in the city by working with Howard, its medical school — one of the main training institutions for black doctors — George Washington University Hospital and two big health systems, Adventist and Universal Health Systems.

May 11, 2020

U.S. botched testing. What about the next steps to fight Covid-19: tracing and isolating?

by Patrick A. Malone

As state and local officials struggle with constituents restless with measures designed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the next key phases in the battle with the novel coronavirus may prove yet more contentious. How ready are we to accept not just testing but also tracing and isolating infections?

The White House is bolting to a cut-and-run approach to fighting Covid-19, deflecting, denying and downplaying its staggering toll — more than 1 million infections and tens of thousands of deaths.

This already has led to a debacle with what needed to be an effective, widespread regimen of testing, testing, testing — not only to see who is infected now but also who may have been exposed to the disease and potentially have some immunity against it.

May 10, 2020

Nursing homes across region failed to protect residents from Covid-19’s toll

by Patrick A. Malone

With nursing home operators bleating up a storm of weak defenses and denials, soaring Covid-19 infections and deaths have laid siege to far too many long-term care facilities in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The consequences have been dire.

In Maryland, the Baltimore Sun reported:

“Nearly three-fifths of Marylanders killed by the coronavirus are residents of long-term care facilities, according to [a recent state] update of nursing home data …The Maryland Department of Health reported that 793 of the state’s 1,338 victims, almost 60%, were residents of nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and similar long-term care facilities. An additional 11 deaths were staff members of those facilities, with more than one of every five of Maryland’s confirmed infections being a resident or staff member of congregate living facilities.”

May 8, 2020

Bookmark deep digs into what’s next with Covid-19 and its impact on medicine

by Patrick A. Malone

For those who may have more time on their hands due to the pandemic and who may be seeking deeper digs into Covid-19, excellent long-form coverage is abounding.

Consider, for example, taking time for the New Yorker article by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a cancer doctor, biologist, and best-selling nonfiction author who delves into the question of “What the coronavirus crisis reveals about American medicine.”

His premise includes in its painful illumination a quote from Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, whose quip assumes a different poignancy when applied to the post-pandemic state of medicine: “When the tide goes out, you discover who has been swimming naked.”

May 6, 2020

Hope and skepticism go hand-in-hand with vital measures in Covid-19 battle

by Patrick A. Malone

Optimism and realism should not be oppositional characteristics when looking hard at the slowly evolving measures to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Experts always have said many ways will be needed to battle the novel coronavirus and much attention has focused on a few: effective treatments, a vaccination, as well as testing, testing, testing.

There are reasons to be skeptical and hopeful about what is going on in each area: