Testing Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

June 14, 2020

Why does lethal bungling persist in fixing the Covid-19 nursing-home mess?

Hundreds of thousands of institutionalized Americans have been infected with the novel coronavirus. Tens of thousands of them are dead. Yet a lethal bungling persists in the response to Covid-19’s savaging of residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Why?

Their owners and operators agree with medical scientists that significantly more testing is required, urgently, so the sick can be diagnosed, treated, and isolated.

But insurers and owners are bickering over who should pay for Covid-19 tests, notably for institutions’ staffers — many of whom are themselves getting sick and dying. As the New York Times reported:

June 10, 2020

Pillars of medical establishment wobbling under pandemic’s big stresses

by Patrick A. Malone

asclepliusrodof-70x300 As the Covid-19 pandemic has put huge stresses on medical systems around the globe, the strains have taken their toll: The credibility and authority — of federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and elite professional journals like the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine — have taken big hits in recent weeks.

In times of huge uncertainty and high anxiety, the public should be able to turn to these respected pillars of the health care establishment for steady, trustworthy, and independent information and execution of crucial policies that benefit the public.

The agencies are not just a pile of letters. Their work, based in rigorous medical science and the best available evidence, is supposed to reject damaging and dangerous rumor, hunch, myth, mis- and dis-information. They help to set standards for care, especially in crises, and they are charged with safeguarding us from disease, dangerous drugs and vaccines, and in protecting the old, sick, and injured in institutional care.

May 26, 2020

Officials’ shiftiness in pandemic response fuels public confusion and concern

by Patrick A. Malone

Because Covid-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus, the world has much to learn about it and its effects. For the voting and taxpaying public, a critical line of inquiry in the days ahead may be this: Why does this disease also seem to cause such an outbreak of shiftiness among our leaders?

Let’s start at the already beleaguered federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once considered among the globe’s best agencies in handling infectious diseases.

Sure, the medical science changes by the day about Covid-19. But why did the agency set itself up for deserved criticism by changing, “without formal announcement or explanation,” its guidance about the infectiousness of “contaminated” surfaces and how the coronavirus spreads? That had been an issue of key concern for experts, who had cautioned the public for weeks now about hygiene and care in coming in contact with such areas. Instead, CDC officials tweaked the language on the agency web site, diminishing the risks. Maybe, they thought, well, that should do it.

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 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 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:

April 26, 2020

In war on a novel virus, declarations of a turning point in 30 days. Really?

by Patrick A. Malone

With the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic now framed as one of the planet’s major battles, it may be worth considering the historical record on the timing of turning points in matters of war.

The American Revolutionary War, historians note, hit a crucial point at Saratoga — 14 months after the conflict became official with rebels’ declaration of independence. A key moment of the Civil War occurred at Gettysburg — two years and a few months after an attack at Fort Sumter tore the nation apart. In World War I, the tides did not seem to shift until the clash at Marne — four years after an assassin’s bullet had plunged the world into war. And in World War II, it is a matter of some controversy, but many experts cite the brutal Battle of Stalingrad as a turning point — roughly 3.5 years after Germany launched a global calamity with its invasion of Poland.

The novel coronavirus, in roughly three months, has killed more than 50,000 Americans, with experts conceding that toll is likely an undercount.