Doctors, clinics, urgent care facilities, and hospitals are laboring to get out an important message tied to the Covid-19 pandemic: Patients should not delay seeking their needed medical services, especially urgent or emergency treatment, due to fears of getting infected with the novel coronavirus. It made sense to postpone many types of medical services as….
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U.S. data show Covid-19’s terrible and unrelenting toll on nursing homes
Federal regulators have issued, at long last, the data they have collected on the novel coronavirus’ effect on nursing homes, giving an incomplete but still devastating look at how in just a few months some of the nation’s most vulnerable people have been savaged by Covid-19. With 12% of the nation’s nursing 15,000 homes yet….
Continue ReadingWith U.S. virus response, taxpayers may need to keep demanding: Who benefits?
Cui bono? That query in Latin — Who benefits? — affirms for linguists that sketchy practices date to Ancient Rome and earlier. But who knew the phrase would be so applicable for U.S. taxpayers considering dubious aspects of many of the nation’s pricey Covid-19 pandemic responses. Herewith a sizable list of conflicts and coziness in….
Continue ReadingVirus 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….
Continue ReadingNew hospitals may offer hope to D.C.’s poor, minority areas as Covid-19 rages
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….
Continue ReadingNursing homes across region failed to protect residents from Covid-19’s toll
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….
Continue ReadingBookmark deep digs into what’s next with Covid-19 and its impact on medicine
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….
Continue ReadingWhy allow authoritarians to silence MDs and nurses in midst of health crisis?
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin highlighted a crucial strength of the 16th U.S. president as he led the nation through one of its most divisive times: Abraham Lincoln encouraged dissent and welcomed opposing points of view, going so far as to appoint three better-known political rivals to top positions in his administration. That extraordinary lesson in….
Continue ReadingFor doctors and patients, worries are rising about pandemic-delayed treatments for other conditions
The public health restrictions put on much of the nation to battle the Covid-19 pandemic also have created complications for patients’ receiving other kinds of health care — a reality that the nation will need to deal with in the weeks ahead. Doctors and hospitals will need to see whether their coronavirus case loads are….
Continue ReadingCorporations love forced arbitration. Innovators hope to make them fear it.
Although big businesses in recent years have developed their legal equivalent of a great white shark — a big system churning along to savage disputes involving potentially many small claimants — innovators may have found a new way to start to tame beastly aspects of the process known as forced arbitration: Scoop up lots of….
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