Practice Management
Mask mandates continue to fall by the wayside across industries and states in the U.S., simultaneous with an uptick in the number of COVID-19 infections—led by the BA.2 variant at this point, but also fueled by yet another new variant being called BA.2.12.1. The New York State Department of Health, for one, has blamed BA.2.12.1 for a recent spike upstate. Public health officials there estimate that the latest version of the virus is up to …
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Proponents of telemedicine have reasoned that being able to see a healthcare provider virtually is more convenient and less expensive than trudging over to the closest emergency room, where a patient is likely to sit for hours and run up an astronomical bill for something simple like a sore throat. While the latter may be true (as urgent care professionals are well aware), a new study published by JAMA Network Open suggests that telehealth usage …
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It’s not uncommon to see healthcare workers described as being “on the frontlines” of battling the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a militaristic analogy that hits closer to home than one might appreciate at first. According to an article just published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the potential for moral injury among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic is very similar to rates seen in military veterans who saw action in post-9/11 conflicts. Based on …
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What at first appears paradoxical—that illicit drug use among U.S. adolescents was relatively stable between January 2010 and June 2021 while overdose deaths increased—has a perfectly rational, if disturbing, explanation according to a new research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association: It’s the substances themselves that make the difference. In 2010 30.2% of 10th graders admitted to using illicit drugs; by 2020 the figure was 30.4%, though by June 2021 only …
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After weeks (or months, in some states) of declines in COVID-19 caseloads and related hospitalizations and deaths, more than half of U.S. states reported an increase in the number of infected residents, with hospitalizations following suit in 10 states according to data collected by The New York Times. Cases are up 10% nationally over the past 2 weeks. In spite of that, however, hospitalizations are down nationally by 17% and there has been no increase …
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New York just became the latest state to grant full practicing authority to nurse practitioners—meaning, if you include the District of Columbia, that NPs now have this distinction in more than half of the United States plus the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. According to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), full practice means that NPs are allowed to evaluate patients; diagnose, order, and interpret diagnostic tests; and initiate and …
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We’ve told you about an uptick in sexually transmitted infection among adults since relaxation of social distancing rules in municipalities across the U.S. Unfortunately, that trend could soon extend to younger patients as well, if data newly published in the journal Pediatrics is any indication. Despite national guidelines that recommend annual testing for certain STIs in specific segments of the adolescent population, only 20% of sexually active high school students say they were tested for …
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Cause-and-effect may be unclear at this point, but an article just published by The New York Times makes it very clear that people with diabetes are more likely than many others to experience serious consequences with COVID-19. While, again, cause-and-effect has not been established, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that deaths from diabetes-related causes rose 15% in 2020, during the peak of the pandemic in the U.S. And the Times piece …
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This will fall short of being a news flash, but physicians believe they spend too much time on documenting the care they provide during their time with patients. What is new (and possibly maddening), however, are data on time spent documenting outside of office hours and just how many physicians are dissatisfied with their EHR system. According to a new article in The Journal of the American Association, 35% of primary care physicians spend at …
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Thousands of cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (and dozens of resultant deaths) moved COVID-19 infection among pediatric patients from “no big deal” to cause for serious concern. It didn’t take long for intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) plus corticosteroids to emerge as a viable treatment. The question of whether that was the best option followed shortly thereafter—with the answer being not necessarily, according to an article just published by JAMA Pediatrics. The retrospective cohort study …
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