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Overnight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death…

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Welcome to Tuesday's Overnight Health Care.

Vice President Mike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PenceOvernight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death rate higher than thought | Sports leagues take cautious approach amid outbreak CDC to issue guidance that patients can get coronavirus test with doctor's orders Top US airline group to meet with Pence on coronavirus MORE briefed senators today, and some were less than thrilled about the shortfalls in coronavirus testing. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said the death rate is now higher than previously thought. And we've got more on the fallout from the outbreak with a look at how sports leagues are playing it safe.

We'll start with Pence...

Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing

Vice President Mike Pence and other administration health officials came to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, and faced some tough questions over lunch.

Bipartisan focus on testing. Some Republican senators said they shared growing concerns among Democrats and experts that there are not enough tests being made available, hindering the ability of officials to know how widespread the virus is within the United States.

Sen. Bill CassidyWilliam (Bill) Morgan CassidyPence pressed over coronavirus response in testy Senate briefing Overnight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death rate higher than thought | Sports leagues take cautious approach amid outbreak Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing MORE (R-La.) said that among Republican senators as well there was "a lot of concern about the testing."

"Our capacity is not where it needs to be right now," added Sen. Marco RubioMarco Antonio RubioRatcliffe nomination puts Susan Collins in tough spot Pence pressed over coronavirus response in testy Senate briefing Overnight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death rate higher than thought | Sports leagues take cautious approach amid outbreak MORE (R-Fla.), though he noted that officials are ramping up their efforts on testing.

Sen. Maria CantwellMaria Elaine CantwellPence pressed over coronavirus response in testy Senate briefing Overnight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death rate higher than thought | Sports leagues take cautious approach amid outbreak Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing MORE (D-Wash.) asked the vice president, who is leading the administration's response, about the lack of tests available.

"They keep throwing out numbers like millions of tests and we're saying, 'that's not right,'" Cantwell told reporters afterward. "Millions of tests aren't available right this second. People are calling their doctors and they're not being able to get tests."

Read more here.

Update on testing:The FDA's Stephen Hahn told lawmakers today that a private manufacturer plans to ship 2,500 kits that can perform 1 million tests to non-public health labs by the end of the week. But lawmakers and experts think this isn't feasible.

Meanwhile, the CDC plans to send out kits to public health labs that can perform 75,000 tests.

Read more here.

WHO: Coronavirus death rate higher than initially thought

World Health Organization officials on Tuesday said the death rate from the novel coronavirus is higher than previously thought.

"Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing.

Last week, Tedros said a WHO team in China found the case fatality rate was between 2 percent and 4 percent inside the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, and 0.7 percent outside of Wuhan.

However, officials have struggled to find an accurate count of the death rate because many people with mild cases don't show symptoms and may not seek treatment.

Read more here.

Trump backs off suggestion to close southern border over coronavirus

President TrumpDonald John TrumpDems unlikely to subpoena Bolton Ratcliffe nomination puts Susan Collins in tough spot Meet the adviser shaping foreign policy for Sanders MORE on Tuesday said the administration is no longer seriously considering closing the southern border due to the spread of the coronavirus, three days after he said the idea was being weighed "very strongly."

"We're not looking at it very strongly," Trump said during a visit to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

"I don't think we've seen any great evidence that that area's a problem at this moment," he added.

The comments mark a significant reversal from Saturday, when Trump suggested closing the southern border was on the table.

"We have received a lot of power on the southern border over the last couple years from the courts, but we are looking at that very strongly," he said during a news conference.

Mexico last week confirmed its first two cases of the coronavirus, which has spread to numerous countries.

Read more here.

Sports leagues take cautious approach with coronavirus

Major U.S. sports leagues are taking precautions and considering contingencies as the coronavirus spreads across the country.

Public health officials have urged Americans to go about their everyday lives, while also warning major disruptions could be coming as the virus becomes more widespread.

One such change could see Americans avoid large gatherings where the virus is more likely to spread, such as sporting events at stadiums and arenas.

Officials from the NCAA, NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL and MLS all said they are monitoring the coronavirus. They've been in contact with health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to get updates on the virus and communicated with teams about efforts to avoid contracting the virus.

But while other countries have banned large gatherings and ordered games played in empty stadiums, the U.S. is not yet considering such drastic actions, and sports officials would not say if changes will need to be made in the future.

Read more here.

Nine coronavirus deaths now in Washington state

Washington state health officials reported three more deaths from the coronavirus Wednesday, increasing the number of fatalities to nine.

In all, state officials have confirmed 27 cases of the coronavirus, including the deaths.

More here.

Trump officials pressed on economic response to virus

The Trump administration is facing growing calls to detail how it will protect the economy as worries grow about the impact of the global coronavirus outbreak.

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steven MnuchinSteven Terner MnuchinOvernight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death rate higher than thought | Sports leagues take cautious approach amid outbreak On The Money: Trump officials pressed on economic response to coronavirus | Fed rate cut fails to halt plunging stocks | Justices spar over fate of consumer agency Trump officials pressed on economic response to coronavirus MORE opened the door to actions to boost the economy and help businesses and workers in the future while trying to calm fears about the immediate impact of the outbreak.

But even as the Trump administration grapples with the public health aspect of the outbreak, there are mounting questions about its economic response.More on that here.

The Fed acts: The Federal Reserve cut interest rates amid concern about the potential economic toll of the coronavirus outbreak. The emergency cut was the first between meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee since the financial crisis in 2008.

But the move wasn't enough for Trump who called, on Twitter, for "More easing and cutting!" The rate cut also failed to keep the stock market from another big dip.

Economic worries growing: While voters remain bullish about the state of the economy there are warning signs that the coronavirus outbreak is causing new anxieties, according to a new poll. More on that poll here.

More coronavirus headlines

Trump: 'We're not looking at' restricting domestic travel over coronavirus

Trump donates quarterly salary to HHS for coronavirus efforts

World Bank, IMF to hold annual summit in 'virtual format' amid coronavirus fears

TSA chief says more countries facing travel restrictions over coronavirus 'soon'

Texas lawmakers call for investigation into CDC's handling of released coronavirus patient in San Antonio

Pentagon calls NYT article on Esper and coronavirus response 'dangerous and inaccurate'

NY subway trains to be sanitized every 72 hours to prevent coronavirus spreading

Facebook skipping SXSW amid coronavirus outbreak

Remember surprise billing?

While coronavirus has been dominating the health care beat recently, the conservative Republican Study Committee on Tuesday circulated a memo to its 147 Republican members in the House, raising concerns with two leading approaches to surprise billing legislation in that chamber.

Echoing concerns from other conservatives, the memo warns that some conservatives may be concerned the House Education and Labor Committee bill uses a "market-distorting price control" to determine how much insurers will pay doctors once the patient is protected.

Likewise, while the memo calls a bill from the House Ways and Means Committee that uses arbitration to set that price "less heavy-handed," it still raises concerns that "while Congress doesn't specifically pick a price-control, it outsources that task to a panel of government-appointed experts."

Read the full memo here.

What we're reading

Supreme Court's ObamaCare review cheers Democrats with election year health-care focus (Washington Post)

Who is getting sick, and how sick? A breakdown of coronavirus risk by demographic factors (Stat News)

State by state

Washington State risks seeing explosion in coronavirus cases without dramatic action, new analysis says (Stat News)

Medicaid expansion tied to fewer maternal deaths, study says (CNN)

The Hill op-eds

Coronavirus preparedness: Insurers and Medicaid need to relax prescription refills

The cure for COVID-19, and so much more, is global cooperation

Coronavirus, the House and oversight

Overnight Health Care: Senators press Pence over coronavirus response in private briefing | Questions mount over testing delays | WHO says virus death...

I work at the airport in the eye of the coronavirus without health insurance – USA TODAY

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Yvette Stephens, Opinion contributor Published 7:00 a.m. ET March 3, 2020 | Updated 10:51 a.m. ET March 4, 2020

When people ask how to protect themselves against the spread of COVID-19, one of the first suggestions from doctors is washing your hands. Here are the do's and don'ts. USA TODAY

I feel exposed and unprotected. There are thousands of other workers who feel just like me. We want to shield ourselves and those we serve.

With dozensof Americans diagnosed with coronavirus in recent days, many travelers have started wondering whether they could be next. Some are even changing travel plans to evade the illness. But for workers like me at New Jersey'sNewark Liberty International Airport, and thousands of other workers at our nations busy airports, its something we have to wonder about every day as the world comes to our workplaces.

The news media and politicians concerned about health risks connected to coronavirus have missed a critical fact: Thousands of airport workers on the front lines of exposure to dangerous diseases have no health insurance.The Centers for Disease Control and Preventionrecommends visiting a doctor when experiencing symptoms, but going to the doctor often means personal financial crises for us.

Having multiple sclerosisand a compromised immune system because of it, means I am at risk as I interact with passengers directly as a security officer. I used to cover my medical needs through Medicaid, but the raise I got last year, which my co-workers fought for so hard, means I was dropped off Medicaid. As a result,my health insurance is in total limbo, and I fear what the future holds, as every aspect of my life depends on my health care coverage.

The medications and treatments I need to survive cost thousands of dollars per month. As a mom, I need to plan for my family, but I dont know what awaits me from one day to the next. Getting sick has enormous consequences for workers like me. There is our own health, our families health and also the health of the people we serve all at stake.

At John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 31, 2020.(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Across the Hudson River at New York's LaGuardia Airport, Jordany Bueno assists some of the most vulnerable people the disabled, pregnant andelderly by pushing their wheelchairs across the airport. Like me, he has to make tough choices about how to balance out his health needs. He is prone to seizures, butlike me, he no longer qualifies for Medicaid with his increased wages.He routinely pays over $3,000 ayear for medical treatments, because its much cheaper than the health insurance offered by his employer. He puts off essential MRIs andeye and dental appointments.

Patricia Alvis, an airplane cabin cleaner at John F. Kennedy InternationalAirport, worksthrough a painful fibroma condition that causes herto bleed constantly. She quickly used up her five paid sick daysand was even forced to go home one day when blood trickled into her shoes. Like Jordany, Patricia couldnt afford her employers health plan, and her income is too high to qualify for Medicaid or New York state'sEssential Plan.

A team effort: On coronavirus, America and China must demonstrate global leadership and join together

Patricia estimates that it is cheaper to take out a loan, use her limited vacation days and fly to Ecuador for a recommended surgery. I fear for Patricia in her weakened state, flying across the world is her best option.

Airport workers understand that being healthy doesnt just mean we can take care of ourselves and our families;our healthalso affects the safety of the millions of passengers we touch every day. Workers understand that the demands of our jobsto daily place our bodies in spaces of heightened security and disease risk means we are owed an equal guarantee of care.

A previous version of this video incorrectly stated how many people the 1918 Spanish influenza killed. USA TODAY

Were at a pivotal moment, when the public and our government are deeply concerned about travel health safety. One step that can help keep everyone safe at airports is passing the Healthy Terminals Act.

The law creates a standard for 40,000 workers.If passed in New York and New Jersey, nearly all of these workers baggage handlers, cleaners, wheelchair attendants, airport food service workers and more will earn extra dollars that can be used to acquire desperately needed health care.

Other contracted workers already have this through similar legislation for federal employees. Airports like San Franciscoand Los Angelesalready require a healthcare supplement. Why dont all airport workers have this?

Sick or healthy, we wont sit around waiting for a broken system to fix itself. I know Ill be in Trenton talking to legislators about the Healthy Terminals Act. And Jordany and Patricia will do the same in Albany. We are fighting to change things so workers like us, our familiesand the people we serve are safe.

We must have other options: Coronavirus fear sickens stock market, spreads need to diversify manufacturing

We are fighting to stay out of debt, go to the doctor and live dignified lives at a time whenthe airline industry is booming. Its time we get a piece of the pie.

Coronavirus is not the first highly communicable disease outbreak that airport workers have experienced, and it will not be the last. Getting quality, affordable health insurance cannot come soon enough for usthe people who serve millions of passengers every single day.

Yvette Stephens is a security officer at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.

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I work at the airport in the eye of the coronavirus without health insurance - USA TODAY

Biden’s Super Tuesday Surge Gives Health Care Stocks A Boost – Benzinga

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was the big winner from the group of Super Tuesday primaries, on track to secure victories in 10 states. But Biden wasnt the only winner on Super Tuesday, as health care stocks are reacting positively to Bidens surprisingly strong showing.

The stock market roared higher on Wednesday as investors cheered Bidens victories and a strong 183,000 rise in U.S. private payrolls in February, ahead of consensus expectations of 155,000. The payroll numbers suggest businesses may not be as concerned about the coronavirus as feared.

Bidens victory also may have removed some risk for the market. While analysts generally see President Donald Trump and Republican policies as best for business, many see Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders as the most risky candidate.

In January, DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said Sanders poses the single biggest risk to the U.S. stock market in 2020. Biden leapfrogged Sanders as the Democratic frontrunner on Tuesday, and health care stocks reacted most positively to the news.

See Also:Federal Reserve Issues Emergency 0.5% Interest Rate Cut, Cites 'Evolving Risks' From Coronavirus

Stephens analyst Scott Fidel said Bidens big night is a bullish catalyst for health care.

These developments in the Democratic primary could set the MCO and Hospital stocks up for a relief rally as the market likely prices in reduced risk of Bernie winning the Democratic nomination. Fidel said.

Bank of America analyst Kevin Fischbeck said Bidens moderate health care policy positions are just what the sector needs.

As a moderate Democratic candidate, he has said that he would build on the ACA to expand coverage through his public option form of coverage, which would offset any negatives from higher taxes. Sanders Medicare-for-All proposal contains provisions that would eliminate for-profit hospitals by cutting rates for providers, as well as disintermediate MCOs, Fischbeck said.

Fishbeck noted its unlikely any Democrat that wins the White House would be able to implement any version of major health care reform unless Democrats take control of the Senate as well, an outcome that's extremely unlikely.

For now, Sanders stumble has been enough to trigger a relief rally for some top health care stocks. Here are some of Wednesday's top movers:

Biden and the Democrats still have a steep hill to climb to implement any significant change to the health care system given Republicans will likely maintain control of the Senate in 2020. Following the Super Tuesday results, Biden now has a 73% chance of securing the Democratic nomination, but Republicans have a 56% chance of winning the election, according to PredictIt.

Do you agree with this take? Email feedback@benzinga.com with your thoughts.

Photo credit: U.S. Embassy Bern, Switzerland

View More Analyst Ratings for UNH View the Latest Analyst Ratings

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Biden's Super Tuesday Surge Gives Health Care Stocks A Boost - Benzinga

Pandemics are why we need universal health care | PennLive letters – pennlive.com

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Our modern-day, right-wing extremist dominated Republican Party has spent the better part of the last decade making countless efforts to take health care away from the neediest and most vulnerable parts of society.

Treating Health Care as a privilege of the rich rather than a right. Just another incentive for the poor to pull themselves up by the bootstraps out of welfare and dependence on entitlement programs. Except for the integrity of a single dying senator, what little progress we had made would have been gone with the abolishment of Obamacare.

Nonetheless, the consequences of our health care system weakened from relentless attack, and the lack of universal coverage and things like mandatory paid sick leave, will soon be coming back to bite us if a worldwide pandemic reaches the USA.

People without coverage or sick leave will be left out spreading the disease among the rest making things worse. In a modern pandemic, the majority of deaths will not come from the disease but from the breakdown of our interdependent society that relies on farmers, truckers, etc., service providers for our every need, that we cannot do without.

The results of the last general election two years ago, shows that the majority of Americans have come to realize that health care is our first and over riding priority.

If we are dead, what good is an artificially inflated stock market fueled by unsustainable low interest rates and trillion dollar deficits stretching more than a decade into the future that our children will be stuck paying the bill for?

Come election time, vote for your health, not your wallet.

Louis R Urciuolo, Lower Paxton Twp.

Trump administration says it might not cover all coronavirus healthcare – Business Insider – Business Insider

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said on Monday evening that her agency may not be able to pay for all "products and services" required for coronavirus patients dependent on government insurance.

"We are looking at what we cover and clarifying the types of products and services that our programs will be able to pay for in terms of Medicare and Medicaid," Verma said.

Verma made the comments during a press briefing held by Vice President Mike Pence on Monday to discuss the novel coronavirus, the risk it poses to Americans, and the government's response efforts.

It opens the door to the possibility that older Americans a demographic at greater risk from coronavirus will have to pay up to receive medical treatment. Many Medicare beneficiaries are subject to a $1,408 deductible, with coinsurance that kicks in after the second month starting at $352 per day and gradually scaling upward.

"People who are subject to cost sharing they are less likely to use medical care, even if they need it," John Cogan, a health-law expert at the University of Connecticut, told Business Insider. "This could put them at greater risk and spread the disease."

Pence otherwise attempted to quell concerns about the virus, saying "the risk to the American people from the coronavirus remains low."

As of Monday, the coronavirus had spread to more than 60 countries and infected more than 88,000 people, with the vast majority of cases in China. The disease it causes, COVID-19, has killed more than 3,000 people.

The briefing came a few days after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar initially declined to promise that a coronavirus vaccine would be affordable for all Americans.

"We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can't control that price because we need the private sector to invest," Azar told members of Congress on Wednesday during a hearing concerning the coronavirus outbreak and the administration's budget request. "Price controls won't get us there."

After massive backlash and condemnation from Democrats and others, the administration reversed course on Thursdayand said any future COVID-19 vaccine would be made affordable.

"I have directed my teams that if we do any joint venture with a private enterprise, that we're cofunding the research-and-development program, that we would ensure there's access to the fruits of that, whether vaccine or therapeutics," Azar said.

On Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a directive ordering health insurers to waive all costs related to the coronavirus for emergency-room, urgent-care, and doctor visits.

"We can't let cost be a barrier to access to COVID-19 testing for any New Yorker," Cuomo tweeted.

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Trump administration says it might not cover all coronavirus healthcare - Business Insider - Business Insider

The Bad Economics of the U.S. Health Care System Shows Up Starkly in its Approach to Rare Diseases – TIME

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

If you ever end up in an emergency room, the first thing that happens is a doctor or nurse will check your critical vitals: your temperature, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and pulse. If those indicate your life is at risk, your care is prioritized over others who have already been waiting or who have been seen by a doctor but require additional testing (e.g. an x-ray or blood test) or a specialist to review their symptoms. This process, called triaging, is the global standard for allocating resources in emergency care.

Triaging is a marvel of modern healthcare if it is abundantly clear that you are on deaths door. But if theres no textbook description of your condition, it can leave you needlessly suffering while the experts try to figure it out. Thats often the case for those with rare diseases, a group of conditions that are not individually common, but combined, affect an estimated 10% of the global population, some 475 million people. An estimated 80% of the 7,000 identified rare diseases are caused by DNA mutations that occur during pregnancy, meaning most of those with this category of illness are born with it. In many cases, these babies emerge from the womb with life-threatening conditions that doctorsworking the triage systemwill immediately address. However, this also tends to lead doctors to then ignore the underlying rare diseasean unnecessary medical expenditure, in the triage system framework.

I am one of the people living with a rare disease.

I was born with a number of symptoms and signs that put my life at risk a collapsed lung, a premature exit from my mothers body after only six months, and malnutrition from a hole in my amniotic sac. These problems were all treated and resolved over a multiple month stay in the hospital dictated by the triage system. I was allocated hospital resources for my life-threatening conditions until I was deemed stable enough to go home: the point at which I wouldnt die if I left the care of the hospital.

But there was another problem that was overlooked, and which wasnt diagnosed until I was five years old.

Every bone in my body was bent and every muscle atrophied or non-existent. I couldnt move my neck away from shoulder; I couldnt straighten my legs, knees, arms, wrists, ankles, toes, hands, or fingers beyond fixed, fully bent positions.

The triage system worked at saving my life, but never addressed how I would live day to day or even physically move from a single location by myself. It never addressed the underlying issue and root of the problem: a rare orthopedic genetic disease.

The life or death triage standard is one of the primary reasons that it takes, on average, seven years for people with a rare disease to get a diagnosis in the U.S.and

I am one of the lucky ones. Serendipitously, a Because of these surgeries, and additional ones Ive had since, I could feed myself, live free from a wheelchair, go to school through the post-graduate level, and hold a full-time job.

The orthopedic surgeries I neededover 29 of them in less than 30 yearshave cost millions of dollars. And these costs grow each year as I undergo additional exploratory surgery in the absence of any cure. However, these costs are still lower than what I would have incurred had I been left as the triage system deemed stable as an infant. I would have required 24-hour in-home care my entire life. I would never have been able to use the bathroom alone, to get dressed alone or to even leave the house alone. The lifetime value of a working individual according to the US Office of Management and Budget is on average $7 million to $9 million. The cost of a full-time caregiver is on average $40,320 a year; if a rare-disease patient reaches the average US life expectancy of 78 years old, the lifetime cost of full-time care is at least $3 million.

Our healthcare system needs to weigh the long-term costs of leaving behind people with rare disease, and, more specifically, evaluate the economic consequences that follow at a global scale.

Even more so, we need to weigh the costs of creating a pipeline to fill the treatment gap facing people with rare disease., Using genomic sequencing, clinicians can holistically understand the genetic roots of rare disease and even potentially cure rare disease through gene therapy, which modifies and permanently fixes abnormal genes that cause a specific rare disease at birth.

Nonetheless, identifying the root genetic cause of rare disease is the only way to begin to cure a rare disease rather than just treating the symptoms in an ad hoc fashion. While certain pharmaceutical drugs can be developed from the findings in a genomic sequence to help mitigate or lessen symptoms, the science suggests the only way to cure a rare disease is to administer an even newer science called gene therapywhich modifies and permanently fixes genes that are abnormal. Considered to be the most expensive option, a However, this nascent science is costly: gene therapy costs around $2 million for current US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved options.

Insurance plans in the US rarely pay for clinical-grade whole-genomic sequencing (which can carry a price tag of up to $9,000)let alone gene therapies. Yet if the most expensive cost to cure a rare disease is $2 million, thats still far less than $3 million for a lifetime of full-time care (which excludes additional expenses). And new studies, like one the World Economic Forum released in the lead up to this years International Rare Disease Day, show that we can ultimately save money in the long term by funding more treatments and, as an added benefit, potentially develop more cures by learning when treatments work and when treatments dont work.

We cant create clinical pathways for the more than 7,000 rare diseases overnight, but we need a standard of care that goes beyond using death as the primary barometer of focus, over-simplifies the complexity of what it means to be healthy, and only considers short term costs. An economically effective, new model could center on allocating resources with the end goal to allow people to reach a level of health that provides basic mobility or basic independencea level of health allowing economic productivity. We are living in a time of unprecedented medical innovation, and our system of coverage needs to catch up. We can do better than just keeping people alive.

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The Bad Economics of the U.S. Health Care System Shows Up Starkly in its Approach to Rare Diseases - TIME

Healthcare’s responsibility to the homeless addressed at HIMSS20 – Healthcare Finance News

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

For providers, homelessness is at the intersection of being a medical issue and a public-health concern, and it's starting to overwhelm local resources in some areas, including hospital emergency rooms.

New state laws in California demand hospital EDs take steps to more safely discharge homeless patients. This can be difficult when patients are reluctant to share their homeless status with ED staff. Also, few have the community infrastructure needed to comply with these laws.

The problem goes beyond California and its legislative mandates. The real issue is that healthcare is expected to manage a population without reimbursement outside of medical care, according to Dr. Ronn Berrol, emergency department medical director for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California.

"I personally think we need to do what's right for the patient," Berrol said. "The legislation came out of people wanting to do something."

During HIMSS20, Berrol will explore how to use the resources available in the community to make a real impact on patients' lives. He will share the changes that Alta Bates Medical Center has made to provide ER physicians with insights at the point of care. It's an approach that reduces costs and contributes to better care outcomes for vulnerable patients.

Each state is different, and within each state counties can have different needs. What's needed is a quick and easy health-information exchange to identify area resources.

Berrol uses Collective Medical, in which real-time information through the ER shows up on a physician's track board. An estimated 80% of area hospitals use the same Collective Medical platform, Berrol said.

The product is able to identify the high utilizers of the ED, because it's been well established that "the top 1% users of healthcare chew up 20% of resources," he said.

Providers are able to link these high utilizers to a primary care provider to avoid the ER, the most expensive place to get care.

"I'm one part of this issue," Berrol said. "But healthcare alone can't solve the homeless crisis."

Dr. Ronn Berrol, medical director for Summit Emergency Department for Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Oakland, California, will address "Navigating America's Hidden Healthcare Crisis: Homelessness," from 1-2 p.m., Wednesday, March 11, Room W330A in the Orange County Convention Center.

Twitter: @SusanJMorseEmail the writer: susan.morse@himssmedia.com

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Healthcare's responsibility to the homeless addressed at HIMSS20 - Healthcare Finance News

Every lawmaker in Arizona just voted for better mental health care. That’s a big deal – AZCentral

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Opinion: Jake's Law won't solve every problem with Arizona's mental health-care system. But the wide-ranging bill makes some critical, positive steps.

Gov. Doug Ducey (center) signs Jake's Law at the state Capitol on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. The wide-ranging mental health bill passed unanimously in the House and Senate.(Photo: Gov. Doug Ducey's Office)

Receiving mental health care in Arizona is like pulling teeth.

Actually, scratch that. It can be a lot harder than pulling teeth, because insurance companies dont put nearly as many restrictions on that kind of care.

Thats why Jakes Law is so consequential.

The wide-ranging measure named after Jacob Machovksy, who died by suicide at 15 aims to remove some of the insurance limits on mental health care and, with any luck, help reduce the rising suicide rate that is taking far too many Arizonans.

Senate Bill 1523 passed unanimously in the House and Senate and was quickly signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, who had previously made suicide preventiona priority in his State of the State address.

Federal law has long required insurance coverage to be no more restrictive for depression, anxiety and addiction than for other illnesses. But insurers often put up barriers by adding pre-authorization, medical necessity and in-network requirements, which can delay care or cut it off prematurely.

Thats what happened to Machovsky, who was discharged from a hospital before doctors thought he was ready. His parents couldnt afford to keep him in without insurance coverage.

He died a few months later.

The bill boosts state enforcement of federal law by forcing insurers to regularly report how they are complyingand makingit easier for patients to file complaints.

It requires improved discharge protocols for patients who are admitted for a suicide attempt or ideation, to ensure they get the referrals and risk assessments they need.

And it creates a team that can study suicide deaths with more speed and depth, so more detailed strategies can be put in place to prevent them.

RELATED: Loneliness is a public health issue, and Arizona is treating it like one

As importantly, Jakes Law makes it easier for students to get mental health care within schools.

It prohibits insurers from denying coverage solely because services were provided ata school. And it establishes a fund, so students whose parents cant afford their insurances deductibles or copays can more easilyget services at school.

Lawmakers agreed to pump $8 million into the fund this year.

All of this is important, because half of those with mental illnesses begin exhibiting symptoms by age 14. Most go years before receiving any treatment.

Improving early intervention can help students cope, reducing the risk of them acting out when illnesses go untreated. Which, in turn, can improve school safety, reduce the dropout rate and help avoid problems later in life, such as incarceration.

SB 1523 recognizes thatschools play a critical role in helping identify at-risk students and connecting them with the help they need during the school day even if they dont provide every servicein-house.

Critically, the legislationrequires the Department of Education to study the adequacy of behavioral services offered in schools. That will undoubtedly highlight the chronic lack of school counselors a related problem that the state also must tackle.

But dont let that diminish the significance of what lawmakers have done. They have sent the message unanimously that mental health care matters. And that schools play an important role in coordinating this care, especially for children.

The states mental-health system still faces monumental challenges to providing consistent, quality care. Jakes Law doesnt solve all of them.

But it is a meaningful step toward breaking the stigmas that keep many from getting this care.

Mental health is not something to ignore. Thats a messagewe all need to hear.

If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK, or text 741-741 to connect with a crisis counselor in your area.

Reach Allhands at joanna.allhands@arizonarepublic.com. On Twitter: @joannaallhands.

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Every lawmaker in Arizona just voted for better mental health care. That's a big deal - AZCentral

XR experts see health care as the killer app for VR, AR, MR or whatever you call it – GeekWire

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Philips Azurion augmented-reality platform makes use of Microsofts HoloLens headsets to guide surgeons through an operation. (Philips Illustration)

Virtual reality? Augmented reality? Mixed reality? Today at a Seattle symposium, experts settled on extended reality, or XR, as the catch-all term for devices that put computer-generated visuals in front of your face. And they settled on health care as one of the most promising frontiers for XR.

I believe health care is going to drive the mass adoption of XR, Vinay Narayan, vice president of platform strategy and developer community at HTC Vive, said at XR Day, an event presented by the University of Washingtons Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering.

Why does Narayan believe that? He pointed out that health-care applications tend to be enterprise-level applications in a high-friction environment, where employees have to deal with loads of data as they make decisions. Health care is also an industry that touches everyone, amounting to $3.5 trillion in annual spending.

Narayan said thats an attractive frontier for technologies like XR, which can streamline operations and bring about better outcomes.

As an example, he pointed to the University of California at San Francisco, which is using HTC Vives VR system to teach medical students how to operate on virtual-reality patients.

Surgeons could soon be using XR to operate on real-reality patients as well. For example, Microsofts HoloLens team has been working with Philips on an image-guided therapy platform called Azurion. The mixed-reality system matches up a patients flesh-and-blood anatomy with a computer-generated model that uses X-ray and ultrasound imaging to guide surgeons through medical procedures.

The Food and Drug Administration has cleared HoloLens-based medical systems for use in pre-operative surgical planning, and HoloLens also figures in a Cleveland clinical trial aimed at guiding surgeons through procedures to treat tumors.

On Thursday, the FDA is planning a public workshop in Washington, D.C., to discuss best practices for virtual and augmented reality in medicine.

I think this is going to be really interesting, said Bernard Kress, partner optical architect on Microsofts HoloLens team.

During his time at Google X Labs, Kress played a leading role in the development of Google Glass, the camera-equipped smart glasses that sparked a sensation (and scorn) when they came out in 2014. The scorn eventually forced Google to phase out its mass-market Glass prototype, but the glasses live on as an enterprise product.

Kress said the optics of smart glasses and headsets have come a long way since then. Among the innovations on tap are light-field smart glasses that let users shift their focus from far to near as they take in an XR scene. Thats very important for surgical applications, Kress said.

Reducing the bulk of XR headsets, and designing the lenses so that other people can see the eyes of the wearer, will be particularly important for applications in the operating room. If you have an Oh My God moment, its really difficult to share this data with nurses. If you cant see the surgeons eyes, well, somethings really missing there, Kress said.

The design of XR environments will also have to be fine-tuned to suit the operating room rather than the gaming arcade. Designers should start to focus on making systems that are calm, smartly fading into the background, said Evie Powell, virtual reality engineer at Seattle-based Proprio.

Proprio is working on an XR platform that can guide a surgeon through an operative procedure, and let medical interns and other observers watch over the surgeons shoulder. Surgeons are able to quickly and precisely integrate their pre-operative plan, and perform the procedure entirely in XR, Powell said.

Perhaps the most important technology coming to the XR marketplace is eye-tracking, which opens the way to true hands-free interaction. You will see it in every single headset, Kress said.

Narayan agreed that eye-tracking is important, and not just for surgery. For example, its hard to imagine being able to work the controllers while youre swinging at virtual balls in MLB Home Run Derby VR. Thats why his company developed Vive Pro Eye, which adds gaze-oriented menu navigation and hands-free control to the game.

With eye-tracking, you stay in position, and actually cycle through the menus and take action with your eyes, Narayan said.

He said eye-tracking will usher in whole new types of applications, such as biometric scanning, identity verification and banking in XR.

The advent of 5G mobile communication networks is also likely to enhance wireless XR experiences. A true AR headset has all these different technologies that are built on top of that. Theres a challenge in building a good headset, Narayan said. What 5G allows you to do is decouple some of the complexities into the network.

XR devices could look a lot different once the next big wave of technology arrives, and perhaps the biggest challenge facing companies in the XR space is building the right surfboard for riding that wave. What were going to see three years from now is being worked on today, Narayan said.

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XR experts see health care as the killer app for VR, AR, MR or whatever you call it - GeekWire

3 Healthcare Stocks to Own Before the Coronavirus Outbreak Gets Worse – Motley Fool

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Despite best efforts from health authorities across the world, it's possible the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak could continue to get worse in the weeks to come. Although the growth rate of confirmed cases in mainland China has slowed, other countries, such as Italy, South Korea, and Iran, have seen an explosion of incidents.

While the financial markets around the world have responded negatively to this news, smart investors can find a few good investment opportunities in the midst of the situation. In particular, companies that provide health services could have tremendous upside potential as the COVID-19 epidemic continues to unfold.

Here are three companies you should consider adding to your portfolio before the COVID-19 outbreak spreads further.

Image source: Getty Images.

CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) has been a bit of an underperformer over the past couple of weeks, shedding about 12% of its market value during the second half of February. While the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic could have played a role, it's just as likely (if not more so) that investors are worried about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who won the Nevada Democratic caucus back on Feb. 22. With Sen. Sanders advocating for a single-payer national health insurance system, health insurance companies face a significant threat to their business should he end up winning the presidential election.

Despite this, management remains quite optimistic for 2020. In CVS's recent fourth-quarter results, the company raised its guidance, projecting annual revenue of $262.0 billion to $265.5 billion, up 2% to 3.5%. The healthcare giant also handily beat analyst estimates for the fourth quarter, bringing in $66.9 billion in revenue as opposed to the $64.0 billion expected by Wall Street.

While the long-term position for CVS looks good, there's a strong case to be made that the company can benefit from the short-term COVID-19 situation as well. Recently, CVS and Walgreens warned Americans that there could be major shortages of hand sanitizer and other cleanliness products as the COVID-19 outbreak gets worse. Short-term sales of products at CVS's retail pharmacies could quickly shoot up over the next few weeks, while visits to its 1,100 or so medical clinics could rise as COVID-19 fears grow.

Teladoc Health (NYSE:TDOC) has been one of the big winners in February, with shares ending the month up about 23%. The company has emerged as one of the premier telehealth service providers, allowing doctors and other healthcare professionals to provide medical appointments via videoconferencing technology, whether from a smartphone, computer, tablet, or otherwise. Right now, about 40% of all Fortune 500 companies have a partnership with Teladoc to provide telehealth benefits to their employees.

Revenue has been growing substantially, with 2019 sales coming in at $553.3 million, a 32% increase from the $417.9 million reported for 2018. It's not surprising that investors are excited about the company, and the COVID-19 outbreak has only further fueled the rise of its stock.

Image source: Getty Images.

Officials from both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that communities, hospitals, and clinics should increase the use of telehealth service providers as COVID-19 spreads. With medical facilities in countries where outbreaks have worsened -- such as Italy and South Korea -- becoming increasingly crowded, Teladoc could see a surge of appointments from new users in the upcoming weeks and months.

Wall Street analysts have already responded with significant upgrades to Teladoc's stock. Analysts from Cowen and Piper Sandler have increased their price targets for the company by 50% and 63% respectively.

1Life Healthcare (NASDAQ:ONEM), also referred to as One Medical, went public back on Jan. 31 with a lot of fanfare. Shares of the newly minted healthcare stock jumped almost 60% on its first day of trading, but since then, they've given back some of their value.

One Medical charges a $200 annual fee to members, who then have access to over 70 clinics across the country, as well as 24/7 access to the company's digital health services, which include telehealth appointments. As the demand for telehealth services increases, One Medical, like Teladoc, could see a significant boost in new users.

Like most early-stage healthcare technology companies, 1Life Healthcare is reporting a significant loss as it grows. But it's backed by a number of major investors, includingCarlyle Group and Alphabet's Google Ventures; the latter is one of 1Life Healthcare's biggest clients, accounting for 10% of its revenue.

Following the confirmation of the first COVID-19-related death on American soil, which occurred in Washington state, U.S. health authorities are becoming increasingly worried about further outbreaks on the West Coast. Concern is increasing because the first patient who died contracted the virus neither from traveling, nor from contact with someone who had traveled recently.

1Life Healthcare has a heavy West Coast presence, headquartered in San Francisco with in-person clinics in Seattle, San Diego, and soon Portland. Should a surge of COVID-19 outbreaks occur in the U.S., 1Life Healthcare is in an excellent position to see a significant surge in customers.

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3 Healthcare Stocks to Own Before the Coronavirus Outbreak Gets Worse - Motley Fool

Overnight Health Care: Supreme Court to hear ObamaCare appeal | Washington state confirms 4 more coronavirus deaths | FDA expects 1M coronavirus tests…

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Welcome to Monday's Overnight Health Care.

The number of coronavirus patients in the U.S. continues to climb, with more deaths being reported. Meanwhile, Congress is getting closer to unveiling a supplemental funding bill for virus relief efforts. And, the Supreme Court has decided to hear the ObamaCare lawsuit this year.

We'll start with the news from the Supreme Court:

In some big non-virus news: The Supreme Court is taking up the ObamaCare case

What it means: The case will loom over the November elections and could make the Affordable Care Act an even bigger issue in the presidential race.

The case will be heard during the court's next term, which starts in October, meaning that a decision is not expected until after the elections. It is unclear when the court will hear arguments, but those could come in October, before the election.

Democrats jumping on the case: Democrats immediately seized on the decision with a flurry of press releases to highlight the stakes for the election, while Republicans were mostly silent.

"This case is a stark, life-and-death reminder how much is at stake this fall and what's on the ballot right now: Democrats must nominate the candidate whom they know can beat Trump and bring along the Senate, to ensure we can protect our health care for generations to come," former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenThe Memo: Biden shakes up Democratic race with Super Tuesdaywins Van Jones: Warren should get credit for having 'destroyed' Bloomberg Biden wins Texas, capping off major Super Tuesday victories MORE said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee called the lawsuit the "single most important issue in Senate battlegrounds across the country."

Read more here.

FDA expects 1 million coronavirus tests to be available by week's end

The U.S. will have the capacity by the end of the week to perform nearly 1 million coronavirus tests, public health officials said Monday.

That would mark a significant increase in the number of people able to be tested for the coronavirus in the U.S. after issues with a test developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led to delays in diagnosing new cases.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn told reporters at the White House that new regulatory guidance will allow academic centers and private companies to more quickly develop and verify their own tests for public use.

Why it matters: Flaws in a test developed by the CDC has led to testing delays. Experts believe there are likely hundreds of cases in the U.S. in people who have not been tested. As state and local health departments ramp up testing, it's likely new cases could be identified.

Read more here.

White House adds VA secretary, CMS chief to coronavirus task force

The Trump administration's coronavirus task force keeps expanding: Trump on Monday added Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert WilkieRobert Leon WilkieOvernight Health Care: Supreme Court to hear ObamaCare appeal | Washington state confirms 4 more coronavirus deaths | FDA expects 1M coronavirus tests by week's end | White House expands virus task force White House adds VA secretary, CMS chief to coronavirus task force Overnight Defense: Watchdog investigating VA chief | Allegations claim Wilkie tried to discredit aide who reported sexual assault | Dem chair working to restore Pentagon funding taken for wall | Navy chief says loss of shipbuilding funds 'not helpful' MORE and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma to its ranks.

The office of Vice President Pence, who is overseeing the White House's response to the disease, announced their additions on Monday.

Wilkie and Verma will join a handful of officials, many of them focused on health and national security issues, already on the task force led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

Pence's office announced Sunday that the task force would also add Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben CarsonBenjamin (Ben) Solomon CarsonHUD has become an obstacle to fair housing Overnight Health Care: Supreme Court to hear ObamaCare appeal | Washington state confirms 4 more coronavirus deaths | FDA expects 1M coronavirus tests by week's end | White House expands virus task force White House adds VA secretary, CMS chief to coronavirus task force MORE, a former brain surgeon; Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn and White House science adviser Kelvin Droegmeier.

Pence has been leading the administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak and briefed reporters Monday evening at the White House alongside Ambassador Deborah Birx, a State Department health expert who is coordinating the response to the virus.

Read more here.

What we're reading

As coronavirus numbers rise, CDC. testing comes under fire (The New York Times)

Major airlines, U.S. officials clash over passenger tracking related to coronavirus cases (The Washington Post)

CNN, NYT, Cond, WSJ, and other media giants implement coronavirus restrictions (Daily Beast)

A detailed guide to the coronavirus drugs and vaccines in development (Stat News)

State by state

Coronavirus in New York.: Outbreak will spread in city, officials warn (The New York Times)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) demands CDC improve protocols after release of San Antonio patient who tested 'weakly positive' for coronavirus (KSAT)

Oklahoma lawmakers divided on how to pay for Medicaid expansion (The Oklahoman)

The Hill op-eds

Coronavirus, respiratory droplets -- and you

Protecting Americans from infectious disease threats, today and tomorrow

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Overnight Health Care: Supreme Court to hear ObamaCare appeal | Washington state confirms 4 more coronavirus deaths | FDA expects 1M coronavirus tests...

Coronavirus is making some Republicans reconsider the merits of free health care – The Week

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

For the first time, CRISPR gene editing technology has been used directly inside a patient, doctors say. Though it could take a month to see if the move was a success, scientists are optimistic.

The CRISPR technique has previously been used on cells that were removed from a patient's body, modified, then infused back inside the body. But this time, doctors at the Casey Eye Institute in Portland used the gene-editing technique directly in a patient blinded with Leber congenital amaurosis, with the hopes of restoring their vision, reports NPR.

Doctors injected the patient's eye with fluid containing copies of the virus carrying the CRISPR gene-editing instructions, which should remove the defect that caused blindness, restoring vision.

The patient is the first in a study that hopes to determine whether it is safe to inject CRISPR into the eye. The study is still in its early stages, and will eventually involve 18 patients, per NPR. If successful, a similar approach could help treat various brain disorders and muscle diseases.

"We're helping open, potentially, an era of gene-editing for therapeutic use that could have impact in many aspects of medicine," Eric Pierce, study leader and professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, told NPR.

Waive Fees for Coronavirus Tests and Treatment, Health Experts Urge – The New York Times

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

Some legislators particularly those who support expanding public health insurance argue that the government ought to help pay the bills of any patients tested for the coronavirus. There is some precedent for this: In 2015, Congress appropriated millions to reimburse hospitals for the care they provided to Ebola patients.

If youre going to get tested for coronavirus, and youre getting a battery of tests and doctor bills, then the government should pay, said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. If were overinclusive and end up paying for a few people we shouldnt have, thats fine. Its worth it to have everyone incentivized to get tested.

When Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, told Congress last week the administration could not control the price of any potential coronavirus vaccine, he set off a firestorm among some lawmakers and advocates for the poor.

Insurers should be required to cover the cost, just as they do now for the annual flu shots. some argued.

We know how to make flu vaccines available to everyone, said Cheryl Fish-Parcham, the director of access initiatives at Families USA, a consumer group. Others contended that Mr. Azar and other administration officials should guarantee that any vaccine for this virus should either be made affordable or free.

So far, however, people seeking testing and treatment for respiratory illnesses are at risk for large unpaid bills. In late January, a Miami resident complained he might be liable for the bulk of his $3,271 hospital bill from Jackson Memorial Hospital, according to a Miami Herald article. He was never tested for the virus but underwent other testing to determine what might be wrong.

In thinking about any potential pandemic, it really seems like, unintentionally, the high deductible structure is designed to impede a public health response, said Ted Doolittle, a former Medicare official who is now the health care advocate for Connecticut.

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Waive Fees for Coronavirus Tests and Treatment, Health Experts Urge - The New York Times

Woman pleads guilty to health care agency theft | News, Sports, Jobs – Evening Observer

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

BUFFALO A Westfield woman pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to charges of wire fraud and filing a false tax return.

Alicia Raynor, 42, entered the plea Tuesday before U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to U.S. Attorney John D. Fabian, Raynor was hired as a business manager for Compassion at Home Inc., with duties including managing company finances and payroll. At various times during the companys operation, payroll and other financial payments were made from different company bank accounts.

While working as a business manager for the company, Raynor opened an account with Intuit Inc., a payroll and payment processing service located outside New York. The Intuit account enabled Compassion at Home, by way of wire transfers, to direct deposit payroll into employees bank accounts and otherwise make other direct deposit payments related to Compassion at Homes business expenses. The payments were made using an accounting software package known as Quickbooks, which linked to Compassion at Homes bank account.

While employed with Compassion at Home, Raynor diverted money from Compassion at Homes bank accounts to accounts that she controlled. In order to avoid detection, Raynor disguised Quickbook entries to make it appear that the payments were to Bank of America, Capital One or Compassion at Home employees.

Between August 2015 and June 2016, the Westfield woman fraudulently diverted approximately $238,871.58 from the companys bank account. For example, on May 19, 2016, Raynor caused a wire transfer in the amount of $2,978.19 from Intuits account to a joint checking account with her husband, with an entry in Quickbooks indicating that the payment was to Bank of America.

In addition, for the tax years 2013 through 2016, Raynor received $1,214,444 in payments from Compassion at Home that she did not report as income on her tax returns for those years. The Internal Revenue Service estimates tax owed for these tax years is $370,005. On May 15, 2017, Raynor caused the filing of a U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, Form 1040, for the 2015 tax year, falsely claiming a total income of $52,290, and income from Compassion at Home in the total amount of $29,615.14.

Raynor is scheduled for sentencing July 8.

The Dunkirk City Charter may see some changes. At the citys Common Council meeting Tuesday, two new resolutions ...

OBSERVER Staff ReportEffects of the coronavirus are moving closer to the local area. On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew ...

Woman pleads guilty to health care agency theft | News, Sports, Jobs - Evening Observer

Emory Healthcare, Verizon Opens Nation’s First 5G Healthcare Innovation Lab – – HIT Consultant

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

( Victor-Gabriel Hofer)

The Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network is now live at the Emory Healthcare Innovation Hub (EHIH) in Atlanta, becoming the nations first 5G healthcare innovation lab.

The 5G healthcare innovation lab at EHIH will test how 5G could enhance augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications for medical training, enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, and provide a point of care diagnostic and imaging systems from the ambulance to the ER.

Verizon joins EHIHs partner ecosystem to help spur the development of healthcare solutions powered by 5G.

The Emory HealthcareInnovation Hub (EHIH) announced it is now powered by Verizon 5G UltraWideband service, making it the nations first 5G healthcare innovation lab. The5G healthcare innovation lab is part of a new strategic partnership between Verizon and Emory Healthcare to develop andtest 5G Ultra Wideband-enabled use cases that could transform the healthcareindustry.

EHIHis a healthcare advancement and commercialization program committed to improving the patient care and provider experience. EHIH leverages 11TENInnovation Partners demand driven innovation approach to solving the most pressing problems facing health care. As part of the partnership, Verizon will collaborate with Emory Healthcare and its nine Innovation Hub partners, including founding partnerSharecare, to help spur the development of healthcare solutions powered by 5G.

Leveraging the Power of 5G to Transform Healthcare

The massive bandwidth, super-fast speeds and ultra-lowlatency of Verizons 5GUltra Wideband network combined with mobile edge computing will allow EHIH toexplore:

augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications for medical training

enable telemedicine and remote patient monitoring

provide a point of care diagnostic and imaging systems from the ambulance to the ER

In addition to providing EHIH with 5G, Verizon will offer network and security services, project management, professional consulting services, and managed infrastructure and sit on the Emory Hub Executive Advisory Board.

The healthcare industry, driven by value-based care and increased consumerization, is set for a paradigm shift that will put a much greater focus on connectivity and access to data, said Scott D. Boden, MD, Vice President for Business Innovation for Emory Healthcare. Across every facet of healthcare, from care innovation to reimbursement model transformation to decentralization of care, speed to data is critical to the digital evolution of health,

To date, Verizon operates five5G Labsinthe U.S. and one 5G Lab in London that specialize in developing 5G uses casesin industries ranging from healthcare to public safety to entertainment. Thisis the first 5G lab Verizon has established specifically focused on healthcare innovationand will serve as an ongoing initiative to co-develop 5G-related use cases forits customers.

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Emory Healthcare, Verizon Opens Nation's First 5G Healthcare Innovation Lab - - HIT Consultant

NASA will reveal the new name of its Mars 2020 rover on Thursday – Space.com

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

We won't have to call NASA's next Red Planet rover "Mars 2020" for much longer.

On Thursday (March 5), NASA will reveal the official name of the car-size robot, which is scheduled to launch this July and land inside Mars' 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021. The unveiling will occur during a live event at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT), which will be followed at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT) by a news conference about the name and the rover's mission.

You can watch both of these events live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission in pictures

Like NASA's previous Red Planet rovers, Mars 2020 is getting its official moniker via a student naming competition. The contest, which kicked off last year, generated more than 28,000 essay submissions from K-12 students representing every U.S. state and territory, NASA officials said.

That initial pool was whittled down to 155 semifinalists, which in January were culled to nine finalists, three in each of three age categories (grades K-4, 5-8 and 9-12). These nine contenders, and the students who proposed them, are:

NASA encouraged the public to vote for their favorite of these nine through the end of last month. But the final decision was made by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, agency officials wrote in an update on Tuesday (March 3).

Zurbuchen will attend the name-unveiling event on Thursday, as will Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington; Deanne Bell, the founder and CEO of California-based organization Future Engineers, which ran the naming contest in partnership with NASA and Ohio-based Battelle Education; and the student who submitted the winning name.

Mars 2020's chief task involves hunting for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. The six-wheeled rover will also collect and store samples for future return to Earth, where scientists can analyze the pristine Mars material in great detail.

The $2.5 billion mission also features several technology demonstrations, including a small helicopter scout and an instrument that will generate oxygen from the Red Planet's thin, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere.

NASA already has an active rover on the Martian surface,Curiosity, which landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater in August 2012. Curiosity has determined that Gale hosted a potentially life-supporting lake-and-stream system for long stretches in the ancient past.

Curiosity was named in 2009 by Clara Ma, then a sixth grader in Kansas. Ma graduated from Yale University last year.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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NASA will reveal the new name of its Mars 2020 rover on Thursday - Space.com

NASA moves forward with 17 companies as part of bid to transform urban aerial transportation – TechCrunch

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

NASA and a clutch of startup and established companies are moving forward with plans to transform mobility in urban environments through the Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge.

If its fully implemented, the new Urban Air Mobility system could enable air transit for things like package delivery, taxi services, expanded air medical services and cargo delivery to underserved or rural communities, the agency said in a statement.

The Grand Challenge series brings together companies developing new transportation or airspace management technologies, the Agency said.

With this step, were continuing to put the pieces together that we hope will soon make real the long-anticipated vision of smaller piloted and unpiloted vehicles providing a variety of services around cities and in rural areas, said Robert Pearce, NASAs associate administrator for aeronautics, in a statement.

The idea is to bring companies to collaborate and also give regulatory agencies a window into the technologies and how they may work in concert to bring air mobility to the masses in the coming years.

Our partnership with the FAA will be a key factor in the successful and safe outcomes for industry that we can expect from conducting these series of Grand Challenges during the coming years, Pearce said, in a statement.

Getting the agreements signed are the first step in a multi-stage process that will culminate in the challenges official competition in 2022. There are preliminary technological tests that will take place this year.

We consider this work as a risk reduction step toward Grand Challenge 1, said Starr Ginn, NASAs Grand Challenge lead. It is designed to allow U.S. developed aircraft and airspace management service providers to essentially try out their systems with real-world operations in simulated environments that we also will be flight testing to gain experience.

Partnerships for the challenge fall into three categories:

The Grand Challenge is managed through NASAs Advanced Air Mobility project, which was established in the agencys Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to coordinate urban air mobility activities.

Companies participating in the challenge include:

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NASA moves forward with 17 companies as part of bid to transform urban aerial transportation - TechCrunch

NASA: Massive asteroid will pass Earth next month – SILive.com

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An asteroid large enough to cause global effects to the planet will pass the Earths orbital path late next month, according to NASA, and is projected to miss the planet by approximately three million miles about 12 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

The newly discovered asteroid, 1998 OR2, was found alongside another potentially dangerous asteroid, called 1998 OH, NASA said in a release. Both measure about one mile in diameter.

The more imminent asteroid is set to be closest to Earth on April 29 and will be traveling at approximately 19,461 mph, according to NASAs tracking data.

The asteroids were found by NASAs Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system, which is designed to track potentially dangerous asteroids and comets before they reach Earth.

These discoveries come on the heels of last months installation of new state-of-the-art computing and data analysis hardware that speeds our search for near-Earth objects, said NEAT Project Manager Dr. Steven Pravdo of JPL. This shows that our efforts to find near-Earth objects are paying off.

Follow-up observations made by Dr. David L. Rabinowitz of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed that neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth, according to NASA.

Our goal is to discover and track all the potentially dangerous asteroids and comets long before they are likely to approach Earth, said NEAT Principal Investigator Eleanor Helin. The discovery of these two asteroids illustrates how NEAT is doing precisely what it is supposed to do.

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NASA: Massive asteroid will pass Earth next month - SILive.com

‘Black In Space’ Documentary Looks At The 1st Black Astronaut That Almost Was – NPR

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

A new documentary centers on Edward Dwight, the first African American selected as a potential astronaut in 1963 for Aerospace Research Pilot School. Bettmann Archive/Getty hide caption

A new documentary centers on Edward Dwight, the first African American selected as a potential astronaut in 1963 for Aerospace Research Pilot School.

For many Americans, the first moon landing remains the most memorable moment in the history of manned space travel.

It was a high-water mark in the space race, but as the United States and Soviet Union were rushing to prove their dominance, a lesser known chapter in that battle was taking place: America's effort to send a black man into space.

Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier, a new documentary on the Smithsonian Channel, brings light to the groundbreaking moment that almost came to be during the heights of the civil rights movement.

The film centers on the story of Ed Dwight, who in the early 1960s was on his way to becoming the first African American astronaut. In 1962, the Kennedy administration named Dwight, an Air Force pilot at the time, as the first African American astronaut trainee.

The selection was made after an emphatic pitch from broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. President John F. Kennedy tasked Murrow, appointed as the head of the United States Information Agency, with strengthening the country's image abroad.

As the civil rights movement was gaining ground, the U.S. was still largely segregated. But Murrow's proposal to NASA to put the first man of color in space was his diplomatic appeal to the majority "non-white world," as The New York Times noted:

"Why don't we put the first non-white man in space?" Murrow wrote to NASA's administrator. "If your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to the whole non-white world, which is most of it."

In his 2009 memoir, Soaring on the Wings of a Dream, Dwight details his experiences with discrimination from classmates and superiors during the astronaut training program.

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, Dwight lost his most important ally, and his dreams to reach space came to an end. He was soon reassigned from astronaut training to unrelated Air Force projects.

"It really is disappointing that he did not fly and was not a part of the Apollo experience," Robert Satcher, a black astronaut who went to space in 2009, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "It would've been fantastic if we saw Ed Dwight walking on the moon."

For years, Dwight's story was largely forgotten. Satcher himself says he didn't know about that chapter of NASA's history until he worked there.

"Although there's a lot to be proud of at NASA, I think it's one of those chapters that is consistent with a lot of other disappointments that African Americans have experienced in this country," he says.

It wasn't until 1983 that Guion Bluford Jr. would become the first African American to travel in space. And nearly three decades after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, a black astronaut, Bernard Anthony Harris Jr., was the first African American to perform a spacewalk in 1995.

Satcher says NASA's early struggles to integrate its force has put American scientific discovery behind.

"If we're gonna be at our best in bringing all the best minds to bear on this incredibly difficult problem, which is deep space exploration, then everybody needs to be included," he says.

"You never know where the next Einstein, genius, whoever, is gonna come from. Maybe we haven't discovered some discovery that we could've made because of denying some kid an opportunity just because of how they look."

Satcher says the pioneering work of astronauts like Bluford and Harris is what inspired him to believe he too could join the ranks of African Americans who made it to space. In 2009, he got that opportunity when he took off on a construction mission aboard the now-retired space shuttle Atlantis.

As part of his work, he repaired a robotic arm operated by another black astronaut, Leland Melvin.

"When I first applied, I had an idea that I could get in because there were other African American astronauts that I saw, and actually got to meet," he says. "We need to have everybody represented so that kid, wherever he is or she is, can look there and say yeah, you know, 'I can do that too.' "

NPR's Andrew Craig and William Troop produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Emma Bowman produced the Web version.

A former intern at NASA, Carvers career has rocketed beyond expectations – WAVY.com

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Danzig

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) Aaron Carver rarely lit up the scoring column in the box score.

Considered an undersized forward-turned-center whos averaged 4.6 points over his senior year, Carver has rarely garnered the glory or the press clippings of team captain Xavier Green, or his former teammates Ahmad Caver or B.J. Stith.

In reality, Carver has never had time for that. Hes been too busy doing the dirty work in the paint; snatching hard-earned rebounds, muscling with much bigger centers, and scoring critical put-back baskets.

Its all about winning for me, said Carver.

Just a terrific young man and a terrific teammate, said head coach Jeff Jones, whose praise of Carver couldnt be any higher.

On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey. On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey. On Wednesday, Carver is one of two seniors who will play his final home game in an Old Dominion uniform, alongside walk-on Drew Lakey.

Carver was never sure how his role might develop. I didnt know if I would ever blossom into a starter for two years, but I knew if I kept my head down, keep going and listen, take in what coaches are saying and try to apply it, I would be able to accomplish something, he said.

This season, hes blossomed into the best rebounder in Conference USA. The 6-foot-7 Elizabeth City native averages 10.2 boards per game, and has twice pulled down 20 in a single game.

Now that Im kind of a marked man as far as getting rebounds, I have guys that come and just push me for no reason, Carver said. It gets a little physical, but I enjoy it.

Hes also enjoyed success off the court. Carver graduated last year with a degree in civil engineering technology, and is currently pursuing his masters in engineering management. Last summer, he interned at NASA in Maryland, and helped work on the James Webb space telescope.

It was a pretty cool experience, and I learned a lot.

Carver has at least three more games left in his Monarch career: two more regular season games, and at least one more in the upcoming Conference USA Tournament. He hopes his team has one more run left in them.

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A former intern at NASA, Carvers career has rocketed beyond expectations - WAVY.com

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