News Day – Abbott, CMS and Telehealth Expansion and More

March 31, 2020: For this week’s edition of Tuesday Newsday, Bill takes a look at some of the most interesting news breaking around the topic of COVID-19. We hear about a new test developed by Abbot Labs which delivers results within drastically reduced speeds. Next Bill gets into sweeping regulatory changes made by the Trump administration to help U.S. healthcare systems address COVID-19 patient surges. After that, we take a look at somewhat of a data-sharing revolution characterized by the Trump administration’s order that healthcare systems provide them with details about COVID-19 cases. We then cover an article about timeframes of the pandemic with the main point being that healthcare providers need to be mentally prepared for something longer than two weeks. Bill gets into the controversy around 3M mask prices next, and praises industry leaders for their local sourcing and foresight in making preparations to be equipped for scaling production rapidly. Finally, listeners will hear about some recent statistics relating to how many people below 55 years old are being infected with the virus. Bill ends off with a few notes for CIOs on preparedness before closing off for the day. Join us for all the biggest stories about Health IT and the fight against COVID-19 right here. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• Benefits of Abbot Labs’ new test: remote testing and results in five minutes.
• Speeds at which the testing capacity will ramp up: 50 000 tests per day after April first.
• Regulatory changes made by the Trump administration to aid patient influx.
• Rapidly expanding the healthcare workforce: redeploying specialists who have no work.
• Temporarily eliminating paperwork requirements to aid in speedier patient processing.
• Building on prior action to expand reimbursement for telehealth services.
• Why healthcare providers are sharing their COVID-19 case data with Trump Administration.
• The 18 month pandemic the U.S government is planning for – not quite two weeks!
• What incredible scaling health IT systems have accomplished in a short time.
• Local sourcing and capacity for scaling at 3M aiding mask production.
• Necessities for the increase in mask prices due to local sourcing.
• Statistics showing 52% of COVID-19 patients being under 55 years old.
• A tabletop game exercise to revise preparation strategies for managing disasters.