Practice Management

Background: Critically ill patients have a high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) during their hospitalizations, and it is standard of care to prophylax against this complication by either pharmacological or mechanical means.

The main limitation of the study was the low incidence of primary outcomes in the control group, which reduced the power of the study.

Bottom line: Based on the PREVENT trial, adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression provided no additional benefit to pharmacological prophylaxis in the prevention of incident proximal lower-limb DVT.

Citation: Arabi Y et al. Adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression for venous thromboprophylaxis. N Eng J Med. 2019 Feb 18. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1816150.

Dr. Sekaran is a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Background: Critically ill patients have a high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) during their hospitalizations, and it is standard of care to prophylax against this complication by either pharmacological or mechanical means.

The main limitation of the study was the low incidence of primary outcomes in the control group, which reduced the power of the study.

Bottom line: Based on the PREVENT trial, adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression provided no additional benefit to pharmacological prophylaxis in the prevention of incident proximal lower-limb DVT.

Citation: Arabi Y et al. Adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression for venous thromboprophylaxis. N Eng J Med. 2019 Feb 18. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1816150.

Dr. Sekaran is a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Background: Critically ill patients have a high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) during their hospitalizations, and it is standard of care to prophylax against this complication by either pharmacological or mechanical means.

The main limitation of the study was the low incidence of primary outcomes in the control group, which reduced the power of the study.

Bottom line: Based on the PREVENT trial, adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression provided no additional benefit to pharmacological prophylaxis in the prevention of incident proximal lower-limb DVT.

Citation: Arabi Y et al. Adjunctive intermittent pneumatic compression for venous thromboprophylaxis. N Eng J Med. 2019 Feb 18. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1816150.

Dr. Sekaran is a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Physicians who are conducting telephone visits during the COVID-19 pandemic will be paid at a higher rate, more closely aligning the rates with payments for face-to-face visits.

On April 30, officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the temporary telephone visit rate change and expanded the scope of services that are eligible telephone visits to include many behavioral health and patient education services.

Rates for telephone visits will jump from $14-$41 per visit to about $46-$110. The pay increase is retroactive to March 1, 2020.

The move was welcomed by the American College of Physicians, but the organization said more needs to be done in order help maintain the financial stability of physician practices.

“ACP has repeatedly requested this change from CMS as the country has been dealing with the COVID-19 national emergency, and we are heartened that they have heard our concerns,” ACP President Jacqueline Fincher, MD, said in a statement. “More still needs to be done to ensure that physician practices are able to remain operational and care for their patients, but this change in payment policy addresses one of the biggest issues facing physicians as they struggle to make up for lost revenue and provide appropriate care to patients.”

CMS also is expanding payment availability for audio-only telemedicine services by waiving the video requirement for certain evaluation and management services. The move is aimed at reaching Medicare beneficiaries who may not have access to video technology or choose not to use it.

“This is a major victory for medicine that will enable physicians to care for their patients, especially their elderly patients with chronic conditions who may not have access to audio-visual technology or high-speed Internet,” Patrice Harris, MD, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement. “This change will help patients address their health challenges that existed before COVID-19.”

Shawn Martin, senior vice president at the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his group is pleased to see CMS roll out this change and noted that it is especially important for patients with underlying health conditions. “This is the only connectivity they may have with a health care system for their ongoing health care needs.”

Samuel Jones, MD, chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology, highlighted the expansion and coverage of audio-only telemedicine appointments as a huge plus for patient access.*

“There was a huge hunger to say, ‘Can we just have improvement in the reimbursement for telephone, which is providing a good service, our patients our asking for it,’ and we were able to get that,” Dr. Jones said in an interview. “It really was, I think, a good thing for patient care.”

Dr. Jones also suggested that the temporary policy be extended after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

“Telemedicine is here to stay,” he said. “But if all of these relaxations suddenly go away with a snap of the finger, or if the reimbursement [is lowered], if all that changes as soon as this emergency declaration is over, we are going to have a hard time.”

The pay increase for telephone services was part of a broader package of increased regulatory flexibility CMS rolled out, including expanding the types of providers who can order a COVID-19 test.

[email protected]

*Correction, 5/5/2020: An earlier version of this story misstated Dr. Samuel Jones' affiliation.  He is the chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology. 

Physicians who are conducting telephone visits during the COVID-19 pandemic will be paid at a higher rate, more closely aligning the rates with payments for face-to-face visits.

On April 30, officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the temporary telephone visit rate change and expanded the scope of services that are eligible telephone visits to include many behavioral health and patient education services.

Rates for telephone visits will jump from $14-$41 per visit to about $46-$110. The pay increase is retroactive to March 1, 2020.

The move was welcomed by the American College of Physicians, but the organization said more needs to be done in order help maintain the financial stability of physician practices.

“ACP has repeatedly requested this change from CMS as the country has been dealing with the COVID-19 national emergency, and we are heartened that they have heard our concerns,” ACP President Jacqueline Fincher, MD, said in a statement. “More still needs to be done to ensure that physician practices are able to remain operational and care for their patients, but this change in payment policy addresses one of the biggest issues facing physicians as they struggle to make up for lost revenue and provide appropriate care to patients.”

CMS also is expanding payment availability for audio-only telemedicine services by waiving the video requirement for certain evaluation and management services. The move is aimed at reaching Medicare beneficiaries who may not have access to video technology or choose not to use it.

“This is a major victory for medicine that will enable physicians to care for their patients, especially their elderly patients with chronic conditions who may not have access to audio-visual technology or high-speed Internet,” Patrice Harris, MD, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement. “This change will help patients address their health challenges that existed before COVID-19.”

Shawn Martin, senior vice president at the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his group is pleased to see CMS roll out this change and noted that it is especially important for patients with underlying health conditions. “This is the only connectivity they may have with a health care system for their ongoing health care needs.”

Samuel Jones, MD, chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology, highlighted the expansion and coverage of audio-only telemedicine appointments as a huge plus for patient access.*

“There was a huge hunger to say, ‘Can we just have improvement in the reimbursement for telephone, which is providing a good service, our patients our asking for it,’ and we were able to get that,” Dr. Jones said in an interview. “It really was, I think, a good thing for patient care.”

Dr. Jones also suggested that the temporary policy be extended after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

“Telemedicine is here to stay,” he said. “But if all of these relaxations suddenly go away with a snap of the finger, or if the reimbursement [is lowered], if all that changes as soon as this emergency declaration is over, we are going to have a hard time.”

The pay increase for telephone services was part of a broader package of increased regulatory flexibility CMS rolled out, including expanding the types of providers who can order a COVID-19 test.

[email protected]

*Correction, 5/5/2020: An earlier version of this story misstated Dr. Samuel Jones' affiliation.  He is the chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology. 

Physicians who are conducting telephone visits during the COVID-19 pandemic will be paid at a higher rate, more closely aligning the rates with payments for face-to-face visits.

On April 30, officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced the temporary telephone visit rate change and expanded the scope of services that are eligible telephone visits to include many behavioral health and patient education services.

Rates for telephone visits will jump from $14-$41 per visit to about $46-$110. The pay increase is retroactive to March 1, 2020.

The move was welcomed by the American College of Physicians, but the organization said more needs to be done in order help maintain the financial stability of physician practices.

“ACP has repeatedly requested this change from CMS as the country has been dealing with the COVID-19 national emergency, and we are heartened that they have heard our concerns,” ACP President Jacqueline Fincher, MD, said in a statement. “More still needs to be done to ensure that physician practices are able to remain operational and care for their patients, but this change in payment policy addresses one of the biggest issues facing physicians as they struggle to make up for lost revenue and provide appropriate care to patients.”

CMS also is expanding payment availability for audio-only telemedicine services by waiving the video requirement for certain evaluation and management services. The move is aimed at reaching Medicare beneficiaries who may not have access to video technology or choose not to use it.

“This is a major victory for medicine that will enable physicians to care for their patients, especially their elderly patients with chronic conditions who may not have access to audio-visual technology or high-speed Internet,” Patrice Harris, MD, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement. “This change will help patients address their health challenges that existed before COVID-19.”

Shawn Martin, senior vice president at the American Academy of Family Physicians, said his group is pleased to see CMS roll out this change and noted that it is especially important for patients with underlying health conditions. “This is the only connectivity they may have with a health care system for their ongoing health care needs.”

Samuel Jones, MD, chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology, highlighted the expansion and coverage of audio-only telemedicine appointments as a huge plus for patient access.*

“There was a huge hunger to say, ‘Can we just have improvement in the reimbursement for telephone, which is providing a good service, our patients our asking for it,’ and we were able to get that,” Dr. Jones said in an interview. “It really was, I think, a good thing for patient care.”

Dr. Jones also suggested that the temporary policy be extended after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

“Telemedicine is here to stay,” he said. “But if all of these relaxations suddenly go away with a snap of the finger, or if the reimbursement [is lowered], if all that changes as soon as this emergency declaration is over, we are going to have a hard time.”

The pay increase for telephone services was part of a broader package of increased regulatory flexibility CMS rolled out, including expanding the types of providers who can order a COVID-19 test.

[email protected]

*Correction, 5/5/2020: An earlier version of this story misstated Dr. Samuel Jones' affiliation.  He is the chair of the Health Affairs Committee at the American College of Cardiology. 

During his shift at a COVID-19 drive-through triage screening area set up outside the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Robert Hopkins Jr., MD, noticed a woman bowled over in the front seat of her car.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

A nurse practitioner had just informed her that she had met the criteria for undergoing testing for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

“She was very upset and was crying nearly inconsolably,” said Dr. Hopkins, who directs the division of general internal medicine at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences College of Medicine. “I went over and visited with her for a few minutes. She was scared to death that we [had] told her she was going to die. In her mind, if she had COVID-19 that meant a death sentence, and if we were testing her that meant she was likely to not survive.”

Dr. Hopkins tried his best to put testing in perspective for the woman. “At least she came to a level of comfort and realized that we were doing this for her, that this was not a death sentence, that this was not her fault,” he said. “She was worried about infecting her kids and her grandkids and ending up in the hospital and being a burden. Being able to spend that few minutes with her and help to bring down her level of anxiety – I think that’s where we need to put our efforts as physicians right now, helping people understand, ‘Yes, this is serious. Yes, we need to continue to social distance. Yes, we need to be cautious. But, we will get through this if we all work together to do so.’ ”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Hopkins spent part of his time seeing patients in the university’s main hospital, but most of it in an outpatient clinic where he and about 20 other primary care physicians care for patients and precept medical residents. Now, medical residents have been deployed to other services, primarily in the hospital, and he and his physician colleagues are conducting 80%-90% of patient visits by video conferencing or by telephone. It’s a whole new world.

“We’ve gone from a relatively traditional inpatient/outpatient practice where we’re seeing patients face to face to doing some face-to-face visits, but an awful lot of what we do now is in the technology domain,” said Dr. Hopkins, who also assisted with health care relief efforts during hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

“A group of six of us has been redeployed to assist with the surge unit for the inpatient facility, so our outpatient duties are being taken on by some of our partners.”

He also pitches in at the drive-through COVID-19 screening clinic, which was set up on March 27 and operates between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., 7 days a week. “We’re able to measure people’s temperature, take a quick screening history, decide whether their risk is such that we need to do a COVID-19 PCR [polymerase chain reaction] test,” he said. “Then we make a determination of whether they need to go home on quarantine awaiting those results, or if they don’t have anything that needs to be evaluated, or whether they need to be triaged to an urgent care setting or to the emergency department.”

To minimize his risk of acquiring COVID-19, he follows personal hygiene practices recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also places his work shoes in a shoebox, which he keeps in his car. “I put them on when I get to the parking deck at work, do my work, and then I put them in the shoebox, slip on another pair of shoes and drive home so I’m not tracking in things I potentially had on me,” said Dr. Hopkins, who is married and a father to two college-aged sons and a daughter in fourth grade. “When I get home I immediately shower, and then I exercise or have dinner with my family.”

Despite the longer-than-usual work hours and upheaval to the traditional medical practice model brought on by the pandemic, Dr. Hopkins, a self-described “glass half full person,” said that he does his best to keep watch over his patients and colleagues. “I’m trying to keep an eye out on my team members – physicians, nurses, medical assistants, and folks at the front desk – trying to make sure that people are getting rest, trying to make sure that people are not overcommitting,” he said. “Because if we’re not all working together and working for the long term, we’re going to be in trouble. This is not going to be a sprint; this is going to be a marathon for us to get through.”

To keep mentally centered, he engages in at least 40 minutes of exercise each day on his bicycle or on the elliptical machine at home. Dr. Hopkins hopes that the current efforts to redeploy resources, expand clinician skill sets, and forge relationships with colleagues in other disciplines will carry over into the delivery of health care when COVID-19 is a distant memory. “I hope that some of those relationships are going to continue and result in better care for all of our patients,” he said.
 

"We are in dire need of hugs"

MaryAnn Dakkak, MD, is another primary care physician whose work week looks drastically different from how it looked before the pandemic. Typically, Dr. Dakkak, a family physician at Boston University, practices a mix of clinic-based family medicine and obstetrics, and works in inpatient medicine 6 weeks a year. Currently, she is leading a COVID-19 team full time at Boston Medical Center, a 300-bed safety-net hospital located on the campus of Boston University Medical Center.

Courtesy Dr. MaryAnn Dakkak

COVID-19 has also shaken up her life at home.

When Dr. Dakkak volunteered to take on her new role, the first thing that came to her mind was how making the switch would affect the well-being of her 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter.

“I thought, ‘How do I get my children somewhere where I don’t have to worry about them?’ ” Dr. Dakkak said.

She floated the idea with her husband of flying their children out to stay with her recently retired parents, who live outside of Sacramento, Calif., until the pandemic eases up. “I was thinking to myself, ‘Am I overreacting? Is the pandemic not going to be that bad?’ because the rest of the country seemed to be in some amount of denial,” she said. “So, I called my dad, who’s a retired pediatric anesthesiologist. He’s from Egypt so he’s done crisis medicine in his time. He encouraged me to send the kids.”

On the same day that Dr. Dakkak began her first 12-hour COVID-19 shift at the hospital, her husband and children boarded a plane to California, where the kids remain in the care of her parents. Her husband returned after staying there for 2 weeks. “Every day when I’m working, I validate my decision,” she said. “When I first started, I worked 5 nights in a row, had 2 days off, and then worked 6 nights in a row. I was busy so I didn’t think about [being away from my kids], but at the same time I was grateful that I didn’t have to come home and worry about homeschooling the kids or infecting them.”

She checks in with them as she can via cell phone or FaceTime. “My son has been very honest,” Dr. Dakkak said. “He says, ‘FaceTime makes me miss you more, and I don’t like it,’ which I understand. I’ll call my mom, and if they want to talk to me, they’ll talk to me. If they don’t want to talk to me, I’m okay. This is about them being healthy and safe. I sent them a care package a few days ago with cards and some workbooks. I’m optimistic that in June I can at least see them if not bring them home.”

Dr. Dakkak describes leading a COVID-19 team as a grueling experience that challenges her medical know-how nearly every day, with seemingly ever-changing algorithms. “Our knowledge of this disease is five steps behind, and changing at lightning speed,” said Dr. Dakkak, who completed a fellowship in surgical and high-risk obstetrics. “It’s hard to balance continuing to teach evidence-based medicine for everything else in medicine [with continuing] to practice minimal and ever-changing evidence-based COVID medicine. We just don’t know enough [about the virus] yet. This is nothing like we were taught in medical school. Everyone has elevated d-dimers with COVID-19, and we don’t get CT pulmonary angiograms [CTPAs] on all of them; we wouldn’t physically be able to. Some patients have d-dimers in the thousands, and only some are stable to get CTPAs. We are also finding pulmonary embolisms. Now we’re basing our algorithm on anticoagulation due to d-dimers because sometimes you can’t always do a CTPA even if you want to. On the other hand, we have people who are coming into the hospital too late. We’ve had a few who have come in after having days of stroke symptoms. I worry about our patients at home who hesitate to come in when they really should.”

Sometimes she feels sad for the medical residents on her team because their instinct is to go in and check on each patient, “but I don’t want them to get exposed,” she said. “So, we check in by phone, or if they need a physical check-in, we minimize the check-ins; only one of us goes in. I’m more willing to put myself in the room than to put them in the room. I also feel for them because they came into medicine for the humanity of medicine – not the charting or the ordering of medicine. I also worry about the acuity and sadness they’re seeing. This is a rough introduction to medicine for them.”

When interviewed for this story in late April, Dr. Dakkak had kept track of her intubated COVID-19 patients. “Most of my patients get to go home without having been intubated, but those aren’t the ones I worry about,” she said. “I have two patients I have been watching. One of them has just been extubated and I’m still worried about him, but I’m hoping he’s going to be fine. The other one is the first pregnant woman we intubated. She is now extubated, doing really well, and went home. Her fetus is doing well, never had any issues while she was intubated. Those cases make me happy. They were both under the age of 35. It is nice to follow those intubations and find that the majority are doing okay.”

The first patient she had cared for who died was a young man “who was always in good spirits,” she recalled. “We called his brother right before intubating him. After intubation, his oxygen saturation didn’t jump up, which made me worry a bit.” About a week later, the young man died. “I kept thinking, ‘We intubated him when he was still comfortable talking. Should I have put it off and had him call more people to say goodbye? Should I have known that he wasn’t going to wake up?’ ” said Dr. Dakkak, who is also women’s health director at Manet Community Health Centers. “A lot of us have worked on our end-of-life discussions in the past month, just being able to tell somebody, ‘This might be your last time to call family. Call family and talk to whoever you want.’ Guilt isn’t the right word, but it’s unsettling if I’m the last person a patient talks to. I feel that, if that’s the case, then I didn’t do a good enough job trying to get them to their family or friends. If I am worried about a patient’s clinical status declining, I tell families now, when I call them, ‘I hope I’m wrong; I hope they don’t need to be intubated, but I think this is the time to talk.’ ”

To keep herself grounded during off hours, Dr. Dakkak spends time resting, checking in with her family, journaling “to get a lot of feelings out,” gardening, hiking, and joining Zoom chats with friends. Once recentered, she draws from a sense of obligation to others as she prepares for her next shift caring for COVID-19 patients.

“I have a lot of love for the world that I get to expend by doing this hard work,” she said. “I love humanity and I love humanity in times of crisis. The interactions I have with patients and their families are still central to why I do this work. I love my medical teams, and I would never want to let them down. It is nice to feel the sense of teamwork across the hospital. The nurses that I sit with and experience this with are amazing. I keep saying that the only thing I want to do when this pandemic is over is hug everyone. I think we are in dire need of hugs.”
 

Finding light in the darkness

Internist Katie Jobbins, DO, also has worked in a professional role that was created because of COVID-19.

Shortly before Dr. Jobbins was deployed to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Ma., for 2 weeks in April of 2020 to help clinicians with an anticipated surge of COVID-19 cases, she encountered a patient who walked into Baystate’s High Street Health Center.

“I think I have COVID-19,” the patient proclaimed to her, at the outpatient clinic that serves mostly inner-city, Medicaid patients.

Prior to becoming an ambulatory internist, Dr. Jobbins was a surgical resident. “So I went into that mode of ‘I need to do this, this, and this,’ ” she said. “I went through a checklist in my head to make sure I was prepared to take care of the patient.”

She applied that same systems approach during her redeployment assignment in the tertiary care hospital, which typically involved 10-hour shifts overseeing internal medicine residents in a medical telemetry unit. “We would take care of people under investigation for COVID-19, but we were not assigned to the actual COVID unit,” said Dr. Jobbins, who is also associate program director for the internal medicine residency program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School–Baystate Springfield. “They tried to redeploy other people to those units who had special training, and we were trying to back fill into where those people that got moved to the COVID units or the ICU units were actually working. We were taking more of the medical side of the floors.”

Even so, one patient on the unit was suspected of having COVID-19, so Dr. Jobbins suited up with personal protective equipment and conducted a thorough exam with residents waiting outside the patient’s room, a safe distance away. “I explained everything I found on the exam to the residents, trying to give them some educational benefit, even though they couldn’t physically examine the patient because we’re trying to protect them since they’re in training,” she said. “It was anxiety provoking, on some level, knowing that there’s a potential risk of exposure [to the virus], but knowing that Baystate Health has gone to extraordinary measures to make sure we have the correct PPE and support us is reassuring. I knew I had the right equipment and the right tools to take care of the patient, which calmed my nerves and made me feel like I could do the job. That’s the most important thing as a physician during this time: knowing that you have people supporting you who have your back at all times.”

Like Dr. Dakkak, Dr. Jobbins had to make some adjustments to her interaction with her family.

Before she began the deployment, Dr. Jobbins engaged in a frank discussion with her husband and her two young boys about the risks she faced working in a hospital caring for patients with COVID-19. “My husband and I made sure our wills were up to date, and we talked about what we would do if either of us got the virus,” she said. To minimize the potential risk of transmitting the virus to her loved ones during the two-week deployment, she considered living away from her family in a nearby home owned by her father, but decided against that and to “take it day by day.” Following her hospital shifts, Dr. Jobbins changed into a fresh set of clothes before leaving the hospital. Once she arrived home, she showered to reduce the risk of possibly becoming a vector to her family.

She had to tell her kids: “You can’t kiss me right now.”

“As much as it’s hard for them to understand, we had a conversation [in which I explained] ‘This is a virus. It will go away eventually, but it’s a virus we’re fighting.’ It’s interesting to watch a 3-year-old try to process that and take his play samurai sword or Marvel toys and decide he’s going to run around the neighborhood and try to kill the virus.”

At the High Street Health Center, Dr. Jobbins and her colleagues have transitioned to conducting most patient encounters via telephone or video appointments. “We have tried to maintain as much continuity for our patients to address their chronic medical needs through these visits, such as hypertension management and diabetes care,” she said. “We have begun a rigorous screening process to triage and treat patients suspicious for COVID-19 through telehealth in hopes of keeping them safe and in their own homes. We also continue to see patients for nonrespiratory urgent care needs in person once they have screened negative for COVID-19.”

“In terms of the inpatient setting, we’ve noticed that a lot of people are choosing not to go to the hospital now, unless they’re extremely ill,” Dr. Jobbins noted. “We’re going to need to find a balance with when do people truly need to go to the hospital and when do they not? What can we manage as an outpatient versus having someone go to the emergency department? That’s really the role of the primary care physician. We need to help people understand, ‘You don’t need to go to the ED for everything, but here are the things you really need to go for.’ ”

“It will be interesting to see what health care looks like in 6 months or a year. I’m excited to see where we land,” Dr. Jobbins added.


 

Hopes for the Future of Telemedicine

When the practice of medicine enters a post–COVID-19 era, Dr. Jobbins hopes that telemedicine will be incorporated more into the delivery of patient care. “I’ve found that many of my patients who often are no-shows to the inpatient version of their visits have had a higher success rate of follow-through when we do the telephone visits,” she said. “It’s been very successful. I hope that the insurance companies and [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid] will continue to reimburse this as they see this is a benefit to our patients.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

Dr. Hopkins is also hopeful that physicians will be able to successfully see patients via telemedicine in the postpandemic world.

“For the ups and downs we’ve had with telemedicine, I’d love for us to be able to enhance the positives and incorporate that into our practice going forward. If we can reach our patients and help treat them where they are, rather than them having to come to us, that may be a plus,” he said.

In the meantime, Dr. Jobbins presses on as the curve of COVID-19 cases flattens in Western Massachusetts and remains grateful that she chose to practice medicine.

“The commitment I have to being an educator in addition to being a physician is part of why I keep doing this,” Dr. Jobbins said. “I find this to be one of the most fulfilling jobs and careers you could ever have: being there for people when they need you the most. That’s really what a physician’s job is: being there for people when a family member has passed away or when they just need to talk because they’re having anxiety. At the end of the day, if we can impart that to those we work with and bring in a positive attitude, it’s infectious and it makes people see this is a reason we keep doing what we’re doing.”

She’s also been heartened by the kindness of strangers during this pandemic, from those who made and donated face shields when they were in short supply, to those who delivered food to the hospital as a gesture of thanks.

“I had a patient who made homemade masks and sent them to my office,” she said. “There’s obviously good and bad during this time, but I get hope from seeing all of the good things that are coming out of this, the whole idea of finding the light in the darkness.”

[email protected]

During his shift at a COVID-19 drive-through triage screening area set up outside the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Robert Hopkins Jr., MD, noticed a woman bowled over in the front seat of her car.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

A nurse practitioner had just informed her that she had met the criteria for undergoing testing for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

“She was very upset and was crying nearly inconsolably,” said Dr. Hopkins, who directs the division of general internal medicine at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences College of Medicine. “I went over and visited with her for a few minutes. She was scared to death that we [had] told her she was going to die. In her mind, if she had COVID-19 that meant a death sentence, and if we were testing her that meant she was likely to not survive.”

Dr. Hopkins tried his best to put testing in perspective for the woman. “At least she came to a level of comfort and realized that we were doing this for her, that this was not a death sentence, that this was not her fault,” he said. “She was worried about infecting her kids and her grandkids and ending up in the hospital and being a burden. Being able to spend that few minutes with her and help to bring down her level of anxiety – I think that’s where we need to put our efforts as physicians right now, helping people understand, ‘Yes, this is serious. Yes, we need to continue to social distance. Yes, we need to be cautious. But, we will get through this if we all work together to do so.’ ”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Hopkins spent part of his time seeing patients in the university’s main hospital, but most of it in an outpatient clinic where he and about 20 other primary care physicians care for patients and precept medical residents. Now, medical residents have been deployed to other services, primarily in the hospital, and he and his physician colleagues are conducting 80%-90% of patient visits by video conferencing or by telephone. It’s a whole new world.

“We’ve gone from a relatively traditional inpatient/outpatient practice where we’re seeing patients face to face to doing some face-to-face visits, but an awful lot of what we do now is in the technology domain,” said Dr. Hopkins, who also assisted with health care relief efforts during hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

“A group of six of us has been redeployed to assist with the surge unit for the inpatient facility, so our outpatient duties are being taken on by some of our partners.”

He also pitches in at the drive-through COVID-19 screening clinic, which was set up on March 27 and operates between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., 7 days a week. “We’re able to measure people’s temperature, take a quick screening history, decide whether their risk is such that we need to do a COVID-19 PCR [polymerase chain reaction] test,” he said. “Then we make a determination of whether they need to go home on quarantine awaiting those results, or if they don’t have anything that needs to be evaluated, or whether they need to be triaged to an urgent care setting or to the emergency department.”

To minimize his risk of acquiring COVID-19, he follows personal hygiene practices recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also places his work shoes in a shoebox, which he keeps in his car. “I put them on when I get to the parking deck at work, do my work, and then I put them in the shoebox, slip on another pair of shoes and drive home so I’m not tracking in things I potentially had on me,” said Dr. Hopkins, who is married and a father to two college-aged sons and a daughter in fourth grade. “When I get home I immediately shower, and then I exercise or have dinner with my family.”

Despite the longer-than-usual work hours and upheaval to the traditional medical practice model brought on by the pandemic, Dr. Hopkins, a self-described “glass half full person,” said that he does his best to keep watch over his patients and colleagues. “I’m trying to keep an eye out on my team members – physicians, nurses, medical assistants, and folks at the front desk – trying to make sure that people are getting rest, trying to make sure that people are not overcommitting,” he said. “Because if we’re not all working together and working for the long term, we’re going to be in trouble. This is not going to be a sprint; this is going to be a marathon for us to get through.”

To keep mentally centered, he engages in at least 40 minutes of exercise each day on his bicycle or on the elliptical machine at home. Dr. Hopkins hopes that the current efforts to redeploy resources, expand clinician skill sets, and forge relationships with colleagues in other disciplines will carry over into the delivery of health care when COVID-19 is a distant memory. “I hope that some of those relationships are going to continue and result in better care for all of our patients,” he said.
 

"We are in dire need of hugs"

MaryAnn Dakkak, MD, is another primary care physician whose work week looks drastically different from how it looked before the pandemic. Typically, Dr. Dakkak, a family physician at Boston University, practices a mix of clinic-based family medicine and obstetrics, and works in inpatient medicine 6 weeks a year. Currently, she is leading a COVID-19 team full time at Boston Medical Center, a 300-bed safety-net hospital located on the campus of Boston University Medical Center.

Courtesy Dr. MaryAnn Dakkak

COVID-19 has also shaken up her life at home.

When Dr. Dakkak volunteered to take on her new role, the first thing that came to her mind was how making the switch would affect the well-being of her 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter.

“I thought, ‘How do I get my children somewhere where I don’t have to worry about them?’ ” Dr. Dakkak said.

She floated the idea with her husband of flying their children out to stay with her recently retired parents, who live outside of Sacramento, Calif., until the pandemic eases up. “I was thinking to myself, ‘Am I overreacting? Is the pandemic not going to be that bad?’ because the rest of the country seemed to be in some amount of denial,” she said. “So, I called my dad, who’s a retired pediatric anesthesiologist. He’s from Egypt so he’s done crisis medicine in his time. He encouraged me to send the kids.”

On the same day that Dr. Dakkak began her first 12-hour COVID-19 shift at the hospital, her husband and children boarded a plane to California, where the kids remain in the care of her parents. Her husband returned after staying there for 2 weeks. “Every day when I’m working, I validate my decision,” she said. “When I first started, I worked 5 nights in a row, had 2 days off, and then worked 6 nights in a row. I was busy so I didn’t think about [being away from my kids], but at the same time I was grateful that I didn’t have to come home and worry about homeschooling the kids or infecting them.”

She checks in with them as she can via cell phone or FaceTime. “My son has been very honest,” Dr. Dakkak said. “He says, ‘FaceTime makes me miss you more, and I don’t like it,’ which I understand. I’ll call my mom, and if they want to talk to me, they’ll talk to me. If they don’t want to talk to me, I’m okay. This is about them being healthy and safe. I sent them a care package a few days ago with cards and some workbooks. I’m optimistic that in June I can at least see them if not bring them home.”

Dr. Dakkak describes leading a COVID-19 team as a grueling experience that challenges her medical know-how nearly every day, with seemingly ever-changing algorithms. “Our knowledge of this disease is five steps behind, and changing at lightning speed,” said Dr. Dakkak, who completed a fellowship in surgical and high-risk obstetrics. “It’s hard to balance continuing to teach evidence-based medicine for everything else in medicine [with continuing] to practice minimal and ever-changing evidence-based COVID medicine. We just don’t know enough [about the virus] yet. This is nothing like we were taught in medical school. Everyone has elevated d-dimers with COVID-19, and we don’t get CT pulmonary angiograms [CTPAs] on all of them; we wouldn’t physically be able to. Some patients have d-dimers in the thousands, and only some are stable to get CTPAs. We are also finding pulmonary embolisms. Now we’re basing our algorithm on anticoagulation due to d-dimers because sometimes you can’t always do a CTPA even if you want to. On the other hand, we have people who are coming into the hospital too late. We’ve had a few who have come in after having days of stroke symptoms. I worry about our patients at home who hesitate to come in when they really should.”

Sometimes she feels sad for the medical residents on her team because their instinct is to go in and check on each patient, “but I don’t want them to get exposed,” she said. “So, we check in by phone, or if they need a physical check-in, we minimize the check-ins; only one of us goes in. I’m more willing to put myself in the room than to put them in the room. I also feel for them because they came into medicine for the humanity of medicine – not the charting or the ordering of medicine. I also worry about the acuity and sadness they’re seeing. This is a rough introduction to medicine for them.”

When interviewed for this story in late April, Dr. Dakkak had kept track of her intubated COVID-19 patients. “Most of my patients get to go home without having been intubated, but those aren’t the ones I worry about,” she said. “I have two patients I have been watching. One of them has just been extubated and I’m still worried about him, but I’m hoping he’s going to be fine. The other one is the first pregnant woman we intubated. She is now extubated, doing really well, and went home. Her fetus is doing well, never had any issues while she was intubated. Those cases make me happy. They were both under the age of 35. It is nice to follow those intubations and find that the majority are doing okay.”

The first patient she had cared for who died was a young man “who was always in good spirits,” she recalled. “We called his brother right before intubating him. After intubation, his oxygen saturation didn’t jump up, which made me worry a bit.” About a week later, the young man died. “I kept thinking, ‘We intubated him when he was still comfortable talking. Should I have put it off and had him call more people to say goodbye? Should I have known that he wasn’t going to wake up?’ ” said Dr. Dakkak, who is also women’s health director at Manet Community Health Centers. “A lot of us have worked on our end-of-life discussions in the past month, just being able to tell somebody, ‘This might be your last time to call family. Call family and talk to whoever you want.’ Guilt isn’t the right word, but it’s unsettling if I’m the last person a patient talks to. I feel that, if that’s the case, then I didn’t do a good enough job trying to get them to their family or friends. If I am worried about a patient’s clinical status declining, I tell families now, when I call them, ‘I hope I’m wrong; I hope they don’t need to be intubated, but I think this is the time to talk.’ ”

To keep herself grounded during off hours, Dr. Dakkak spends time resting, checking in with her family, journaling “to get a lot of feelings out,” gardening, hiking, and joining Zoom chats with friends. Once recentered, she draws from a sense of obligation to others as she prepares for her next shift caring for COVID-19 patients.

“I have a lot of love for the world that I get to expend by doing this hard work,” she said. “I love humanity and I love humanity in times of crisis. The interactions I have with patients and their families are still central to why I do this work. I love my medical teams, and I would never want to let them down. It is nice to feel the sense of teamwork across the hospital. The nurses that I sit with and experience this with are amazing. I keep saying that the only thing I want to do when this pandemic is over is hug everyone. I think we are in dire need of hugs.”
 

Finding light in the darkness

Internist Katie Jobbins, DO, also has worked in a professional role that was created because of COVID-19.

Shortly before Dr. Jobbins was deployed to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Ma., for 2 weeks in April of 2020 to help clinicians with an anticipated surge of COVID-19 cases, she encountered a patient who walked into Baystate’s High Street Health Center.

“I think I have COVID-19,” the patient proclaimed to her, at the outpatient clinic that serves mostly inner-city, Medicaid patients.

Prior to becoming an ambulatory internist, Dr. Jobbins was a surgical resident. “So I went into that mode of ‘I need to do this, this, and this,’ ” she said. “I went through a checklist in my head to make sure I was prepared to take care of the patient.”

She applied that same systems approach during her redeployment assignment in the tertiary care hospital, which typically involved 10-hour shifts overseeing internal medicine residents in a medical telemetry unit. “We would take care of people under investigation for COVID-19, but we were not assigned to the actual COVID unit,” said Dr. Jobbins, who is also associate program director for the internal medicine residency program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School–Baystate Springfield. “They tried to redeploy other people to those units who had special training, and we were trying to back fill into where those people that got moved to the COVID units or the ICU units were actually working. We were taking more of the medical side of the floors.”

Even so, one patient on the unit was suspected of having COVID-19, so Dr. Jobbins suited up with personal protective equipment and conducted a thorough exam with residents waiting outside the patient’s room, a safe distance away. “I explained everything I found on the exam to the residents, trying to give them some educational benefit, even though they couldn’t physically examine the patient because we’re trying to protect them since they’re in training,” she said. “It was anxiety provoking, on some level, knowing that there’s a potential risk of exposure [to the virus], but knowing that Baystate Health has gone to extraordinary measures to make sure we have the correct PPE and support us is reassuring. I knew I had the right equipment and the right tools to take care of the patient, which calmed my nerves and made me feel like I could do the job. That’s the most important thing as a physician during this time: knowing that you have people supporting you who have your back at all times.”

Like Dr. Dakkak, Dr. Jobbins had to make some adjustments to her interaction with her family.

Before she began the deployment, Dr. Jobbins engaged in a frank discussion with her husband and her two young boys about the risks she faced working in a hospital caring for patients with COVID-19. “My husband and I made sure our wills were up to date, and we talked about what we would do if either of us got the virus,” she said. To minimize the potential risk of transmitting the virus to her loved ones during the two-week deployment, she considered living away from her family in a nearby home owned by her father, but decided against that and to “take it day by day.” Following her hospital shifts, Dr. Jobbins changed into a fresh set of clothes before leaving the hospital. Once she arrived home, she showered to reduce the risk of possibly becoming a vector to her family.

She had to tell her kids: “You can’t kiss me right now.”

“As much as it’s hard for them to understand, we had a conversation [in which I explained] ‘This is a virus. It will go away eventually, but it’s a virus we’re fighting.’ It’s interesting to watch a 3-year-old try to process that and take his play samurai sword or Marvel toys and decide he’s going to run around the neighborhood and try to kill the virus.”

At the High Street Health Center, Dr. Jobbins and her colleagues have transitioned to conducting most patient encounters via telephone or video appointments. “We have tried to maintain as much continuity for our patients to address their chronic medical needs through these visits, such as hypertension management and diabetes care,” she said. “We have begun a rigorous screening process to triage and treat patients suspicious for COVID-19 through telehealth in hopes of keeping them safe and in their own homes. We also continue to see patients for nonrespiratory urgent care needs in person once they have screened negative for COVID-19.”

“In terms of the inpatient setting, we’ve noticed that a lot of people are choosing not to go to the hospital now, unless they’re extremely ill,” Dr. Jobbins noted. “We’re going to need to find a balance with when do people truly need to go to the hospital and when do they not? What can we manage as an outpatient versus having someone go to the emergency department? That’s really the role of the primary care physician. We need to help people understand, ‘You don’t need to go to the ED for everything, but here are the things you really need to go for.’ ”

“It will be interesting to see what health care looks like in 6 months or a year. I’m excited to see where we land,” Dr. Jobbins added.


 

Hopes for the Future of Telemedicine

When the practice of medicine enters a post–COVID-19 era, Dr. Jobbins hopes that telemedicine will be incorporated more into the delivery of patient care. “I’ve found that many of my patients who often are no-shows to the inpatient version of their visits have had a higher success rate of follow-through when we do the telephone visits,” she said. “It’s been very successful. I hope that the insurance companies and [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid] will continue to reimburse this as they see this is a benefit to our patients.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

Dr. Hopkins is also hopeful that physicians will be able to successfully see patients via telemedicine in the postpandemic world.

“For the ups and downs we’ve had with telemedicine, I’d love for us to be able to enhance the positives and incorporate that into our practice going forward. If we can reach our patients and help treat them where they are, rather than them having to come to us, that may be a plus,” he said.

In the meantime, Dr. Jobbins presses on as the curve of COVID-19 cases flattens in Western Massachusetts and remains grateful that she chose to practice medicine.

“The commitment I have to being an educator in addition to being a physician is part of why I keep doing this,” Dr. Jobbins said. “I find this to be one of the most fulfilling jobs and careers you could ever have: being there for people when they need you the most. That’s really what a physician’s job is: being there for people when a family member has passed away or when they just need to talk because they’re having anxiety. At the end of the day, if we can impart that to those we work with and bring in a positive attitude, it’s infectious and it makes people see this is a reason we keep doing what we’re doing.”

She’s also been heartened by the kindness of strangers during this pandemic, from those who made and donated face shields when they were in short supply, to those who delivered food to the hospital as a gesture of thanks.

“I had a patient who made homemade masks and sent them to my office,” she said. “There’s obviously good and bad during this time, but I get hope from seeing all of the good things that are coming out of this, the whole idea of finding the light in the darkness.”

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During his shift at a COVID-19 drive-through triage screening area set up outside the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Robert Hopkins Jr., MD, noticed a woman bowled over in the front seat of her car.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

A nurse practitioner had just informed her that she had met the criteria for undergoing testing for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

“She was very upset and was crying nearly inconsolably,” said Dr. Hopkins, who directs the division of general internal medicine at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences College of Medicine. “I went over and visited with her for a few minutes. She was scared to death that we [had] told her she was going to die. In her mind, if she had COVID-19 that meant a death sentence, and if we were testing her that meant she was likely to not survive.”

Dr. Hopkins tried his best to put testing in perspective for the woman. “At least she came to a level of comfort and realized that we were doing this for her, that this was not a death sentence, that this was not her fault,” he said. “She was worried about infecting her kids and her grandkids and ending up in the hospital and being a burden. Being able to spend that few minutes with her and help to bring down her level of anxiety – I think that’s where we need to put our efforts as physicians right now, helping people understand, ‘Yes, this is serious. Yes, we need to continue to social distance. Yes, we need to be cautious. But, we will get through this if we all work together to do so.’ ”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Hopkins spent part of his time seeing patients in the university’s main hospital, but most of it in an outpatient clinic where he and about 20 other primary care physicians care for patients and precept medical residents. Now, medical residents have been deployed to other services, primarily in the hospital, and he and his physician colleagues are conducting 80%-90% of patient visits by video conferencing or by telephone. It’s a whole new world.

“We’ve gone from a relatively traditional inpatient/outpatient practice where we’re seeing patients face to face to doing some face-to-face visits, but an awful lot of what we do now is in the technology domain,” said Dr. Hopkins, who also assisted with health care relief efforts during hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

“A group of six of us has been redeployed to assist with the surge unit for the inpatient facility, so our outpatient duties are being taken on by some of our partners.”

He also pitches in at the drive-through COVID-19 screening clinic, which was set up on March 27 and operates between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., 7 days a week. “We’re able to measure people’s temperature, take a quick screening history, decide whether their risk is such that we need to do a COVID-19 PCR [polymerase chain reaction] test,” he said. “Then we make a determination of whether they need to go home on quarantine awaiting those results, or if they don’t have anything that needs to be evaluated, or whether they need to be triaged to an urgent care setting or to the emergency department.”

To minimize his risk of acquiring COVID-19, he follows personal hygiene practices recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also places his work shoes in a shoebox, which he keeps in his car. “I put them on when I get to the parking deck at work, do my work, and then I put them in the shoebox, slip on another pair of shoes and drive home so I’m not tracking in things I potentially had on me,” said Dr. Hopkins, who is married and a father to two college-aged sons and a daughter in fourth grade. “When I get home I immediately shower, and then I exercise or have dinner with my family.”

Despite the longer-than-usual work hours and upheaval to the traditional medical practice model brought on by the pandemic, Dr. Hopkins, a self-described “glass half full person,” said that he does his best to keep watch over his patients and colleagues. “I’m trying to keep an eye out on my team members – physicians, nurses, medical assistants, and folks at the front desk – trying to make sure that people are getting rest, trying to make sure that people are not overcommitting,” he said. “Because if we’re not all working together and working for the long term, we’re going to be in trouble. This is not going to be a sprint; this is going to be a marathon for us to get through.”

To keep mentally centered, he engages in at least 40 minutes of exercise each day on his bicycle or on the elliptical machine at home. Dr. Hopkins hopes that the current efforts to redeploy resources, expand clinician skill sets, and forge relationships with colleagues in other disciplines will carry over into the delivery of health care when COVID-19 is a distant memory. “I hope that some of those relationships are going to continue and result in better care for all of our patients,” he said.
 

"We are in dire need of hugs"

MaryAnn Dakkak, MD, is another primary care physician whose work week looks drastically different from how it looked before the pandemic. Typically, Dr. Dakkak, a family physician at Boston University, practices a mix of clinic-based family medicine and obstetrics, and works in inpatient medicine 6 weeks a year. Currently, she is leading a COVID-19 team full time at Boston Medical Center, a 300-bed safety-net hospital located on the campus of Boston University Medical Center.

Courtesy Dr. MaryAnn Dakkak

COVID-19 has also shaken up her life at home.

When Dr. Dakkak volunteered to take on her new role, the first thing that came to her mind was how making the switch would affect the well-being of her 8-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter.

“I thought, ‘How do I get my children somewhere where I don’t have to worry about them?’ ” Dr. Dakkak said.

She floated the idea with her husband of flying their children out to stay with her recently retired parents, who live outside of Sacramento, Calif., until the pandemic eases up. “I was thinking to myself, ‘Am I overreacting? Is the pandemic not going to be that bad?’ because the rest of the country seemed to be in some amount of denial,” she said. “So, I called my dad, who’s a retired pediatric anesthesiologist. He’s from Egypt so he’s done crisis medicine in his time. He encouraged me to send the kids.”

On the same day that Dr. Dakkak began her first 12-hour COVID-19 shift at the hospital, her husband and children boarded a plane to California, where the kids remain in the care of her parents. Her husband returned after staying there for 2 weeks. “Every day when I’m working, I validate my decision,” she said. “When I first started, I worked 5 nights in a row, had 2 days off, and then worked 6 nights in a row. I was busy so I didn’t think about [being away from my kids], but at the same time I was grateful that I didn’t have to come home and worry about homeschooling the kids or infecting them.”

She checks in with them as she can via cell phone or FaceTime. “My son has been very honest,” Dr. Dakkak said. “He says, ‘FaceTime makes me miss you more, and I don’t like it,’ which I understand. I’ll call my mom, and if they want to talk to me, they’ll talk to me. If they don’t want to talk to me, I’m okay. This is about them being healthy and safe. I sent them a care package a few days ago with cards and some workbooks. I’m optimistic that in June I can at least see them if not bring them home.”

Dr. Dakkak describes leading a COVID-19 team as a grueling experience that challenges her medical know-how nearly every day, with seemingly ever-changing algorithms. “Our knowledge of this disease is five steps behind, and changing at lightning speed,” said Dr. Dakkak, who completed a fellowship in surgical and high-risk obstetrics. “It’s hard to balance continuing to teach evidence-based medicine for everything else in medicine [with continuing] to practice minimal and ever-changing evidence-based COVID medicine. We just don’t know enough [about the virus] yet. This is nothing like we were taught in medical school. Everyone has elevated d-dimers with COVID-19, and we don’t get CT pulmonary angiograms [CTPAs] on all of them; we wouldn’t physically be able to. Some patients have d-dimers in the thousands, and only some are stable to get CTPAs. We are also finding pulmonary embolisms. Now we’re basing our algorithm on anticoagulation due to d-dimers because sometimes you can’t always do a CTPA even if you want to. On the other hand, we have people who are coming into the hospital too late. We’ve had a few who have come in after having days of stroke symptoms. I worry about our patients at home who hesitate to come in when they really should.”

Sometimes she feels sad for the medical residents on her team because their instinct is to go in and check on each patient, “but I don’t want them to get exposed,” she said. “So, we check in by phone, or if they need a physical check-in, we minimize the check-ins; only one of us goes in. I’m more willing to put myself in the room than to put them in the room. I also feel for them because they came into medicine for the humanity of medicine – not the charting or the ordering of medicine. I also worry about the acuity and sadness they’re seeing. This is a rough introduction to medicine for them.”

When interviewed for this story in late April, Dr. Dakkak had kept track of her intubated COVID-19 patients. “Most of my patients get to go home without having been intubated, but those aren’t the ones I worry about,” she said. “I have two patients I have been watching. One of them has just been extubated and I’m still worried about him, but I’m hoping he’s going to be fine. The other one is the first pregnant woman we intubated. She is now extubated, doing really well, and went home. Her fetus is doing well, never had any issues while she was intubated. Those cases make me happy. They were both under the age of 35. It is nice to follow those intubations and find that the majority are doing okay.”

The first patient she had cared for who died was a young man “who was always in good spirits,” she recalled. “We called his brother right before intubating him. After intubation, his oxygen saturation didn’t jump up, which made me worry a bit.” About a week later, the young man died. “I kept thinking, ‘We intubated him when he was still comfortable talking. Should I have put it off and had him call more people to say goodbye? Should I have known that he wasn’t going to wake up?’ ” said Dr. Dakkak, who is also women’s health director at Manet Community Health Centers. “A lot of us have worked on our end-of-life discussions in the past month, just being able to tell somebody, ‘This might be your last time to call family. Call family and talk to whoever you want.’ Guilt isn’t the right word, but it’s unsettling if I’m the last person a patient talks to. I feel that, if that’s the case, then I didn’t do a good enough job trying to get them to their family or friends. If I am worried about a patient’s clinical status declining, I tell families now, when I call them, ‘I hope I’m wrong; I hope they don’t need to be intubated, but I think this is the time to talk.’ ”

To keep herself grounded during off hours, Dr. Dakkak spends time resting, checking in with her family, journaling “to get a lot of feelings out,” gardening, hiking, and joining Zoom chats with friends. Once recentered, she draws from a sense of obligation to others as she prepares for her next shift caring for COVID-19 patients.

“I have a lot of love for the world that I get to expend by doing this hard work,” she said. “I love humanity and I love humanity in times of crisis. The interactions I have with patients and their families are still central to why I do this work. I love my medical teams, and I would never want to let them down. It is nice to feel the sense of teamwork across the hospital. The nurses that I sit with and experience this with are amazing. I keep saying that the only thing I want to do when this pandemic is over is hug everyone. I think we are in dire need of hugs.”
 

Finding light in the darkness

Internist Katie Jobbins, DO, also has worked in a professional role that was created because of COVID-19.

Shortly before Dr. Jobbins was deployed to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Ma., for 2 weeks in April of 2020 to help clinicians with an anticipated surge of COVID-19 cases, she encountered a patient who walked into Baystate’s High Street Health Center.

“I think I have COVID-19,” the patient proclaimed to her, at the outpatient clinic that serves mostly inner-city, Medicaid patients.

Prior to becoming an ambulatory internist, Dr. Jobbins was a surgical resident. “So I went into that mode of ‘I need to do this, this, and this,’ ” she said. “I went through a checklist in my head to make sure I was prepared to take care of the patient.”

She applied that same systems approach during her redeployment assignment in the tertiary care hospital, which typically involved 10-hour shifts overseeing internal medicine residents in a medical telemetry unit. “We would take care of people under investigation for COVID-19, but we were not assigned to the actual COVID unit,” said Dr. Jobbins, who is also associate program director for the internal medicine residency program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School–Baystate Springfield. “They tried to redeploy other people to those units who had special training, and we were trying to back fill into where those people that got moved to the COVID units or the ICU units were actually working. We were taking more of the medical side of the floors.”

Even so, one patient on the unit was suspected of having COVID-19, so Dr. Jobbins suited up with personal protective equipment and conducted a thorough exam with residents waiting outside the patient’s room, a safe distance away. “I explained everything I found on the exam to the residents, trying to give them some educational benefit, even though they couldn’t physically examine the patient because we’re trying to protect them since they’re in training,” she said. “It was anxiety provoking, on some level, knowing that there’s a potential risk of exposure [to the virus], but knowing that Baystate Health has gone to extraordinary measures to make sure we have the correct PPE and support us is reassuring. I knew I had the right equipment and the right tools to take care of the patient, which calmed my nerves and made me feel like I could do the job. That’s the most important thing as a physician during this time: knowing that you have people supporting you who have your back at all times.”

Like Dr. Dakkak, Dr. Jobbins had to make some adjustments to her interaction with her family.

Before she began the deployment, Dr. Jobbins engaged in a frank discussion with her husband and her two young boys about the risks she faced working in a hospital caring for patients with COVID-19. “My husband and I made sure our wills were up to date, and we talked about what we would do if either of us got the virus,” she said. To minimize the potential risk of transmitting the virus to her loved ones during the two-week deployment, she considered living away from her family in a nearby home owned by her father, but decided against that and to “take it day by day.” Following her hospital shifts, Dr. Jobbins changed into a fresh set of clothes before leaving the hospital. Once she arrived home, she showered to reduce the risk of possibly becoming a vector to her family.

She had to tell her kids: “You can’t kiss me right now.”

“As much as it’s hard for them to understand, we had a conversation [in which I explained] ‘This is a virus. It will go away eventually, but it’s a virus we’re fighting.’ It’s interesting to watch a 3-year-old try to process that and take his play samurai sword or Marvel toys and decide he’s going to run around the neighborhood and try to kill the virus.”

At the High Street Health Center, Dr. Jobbins and her colleagues have transitioned to conducting most patient encounters via telephone or video appointments. “We have tried to maintain as much continuity for our patients to address their chronic medical needs through these visits, such as hypertension management and diabetes care,” she said. “We have begun a rigorous screening process to triage and treat patients suspicious for COVID-19 through telehealth in hopes of keeping them safe and in their own homes. We also continue to see patients for nonrespiratory urgent care needs in person once they have screened negative for COVID-19.”

“In terms of the inpatient setting, we’ve noticed that a lot of people are choosing not to go to the hospital now, unless they’re extremely ill,” Dr. Jobbins noted. “We’re going to need to find a balance with when do people truly need to go to the hospital and when do they not? What can we manage as an outpatient versus having someone go to the emergency department? That’s really the role of the primary care physician. We need to help people understand, ‘You don’t need to go to the ED for everything, but here are the things you really need to go for.’ ”

“It will be interesting to see what health care looks like in 6 months or a year. I’m excited to see where we land,” Dr. Jobbins added.


 

Hopes for the Future of Telemedicine

When the practice of medicine enters a post–COVID-19 era, Dr. Jobbins hopes that telemedicine will be incorporated more into the delivery of patient care. “I’ve found that many of my patients who often are no-shows to the inpatient version of their visits have had a higher success rate of follow-through when we do the telephone visits,” she said. “It’s been very successful. I hope that the insurance companies and [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid] will continue to reimburse this as they see this is a benefit to our patients.

Courtesy Dr. Robert Hopkins, Jr.

Dr. Hopkins is also hopeful that physicians will be able to successfully see patients via telemedicine in the postpandemic world.

“For the ups and downs we’ve had with telemedicine, I’d love for us to be able to enhance the positives and incorporate that into our practice going forward. If we can reach our patients and help treat them where they are, rather than them having to come to us, that may be a plus,” he said.

In the meantime, Dr. Jobbins presses on as the curve of COVID-19 cases flattens in Western Massachusetts and remains grateful that she chose to practice medicine.

“The commitment I have to being an educator in addition to being a physician is part of why I keep doing this,” Dr. Jobbins said. “I find this to be one of the most fulfilling jobs and careers you could ever have: being there for people when they need you the most. That’s really what a physician’s job is: being there for people when a family member has passed away or when they just need to talk because they’re having anxiety. At the end of the day, if we can impart that to those we work with and bring in a positive attitude, it’s infectious and it makes people see this is a reason we keep doing what we’re doing.”

She’s also been heartened by the kindness of strangers during this pandemic, from those who made and donated face shields when they were in short supply, to those who delivered food to the hospital as a gesture of thanks.

“I had a patient who made homemade masks and sent them to my office,” she said. “There’s obviously good and bad during this time, but I get hope from seeing all of the good things that are coming out of this, the whole idea of finding the light in the darkness.”

[email protected]

Although there are many benefits to the hospital medicine model of inpatient care, there is perhaps no greater Achilles heel than the discontinuity inherent to the care model. The trust and familiarity garnered from longitudinal patient-provider relationships is sacrificed for the benefits of focused practice, efficiency, and enhanced availability.

Any system involves competing priorities, and some degree of discontinuity is inevitable. Would it make sense for a hospitalist to stay on service until every panel patient is discharged? For obvious economic, lifestyle, and other reasons, of course not. Our charge then is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, but to ensure thoughtful and consistent continuity for the good of the patient, the provider, and the hospital. The following tips should help your team achieve the best possible balance.
 

Avoid orphan rounding shifts

An “orphan” rounding shift refers to a single shift untethered to a stretch. For admitting or administrative duties, this generally poses no problem, but for a rounding shift it is undesirable. No matter how talented or industrious the provider, it is very difficult for them to effectively provide seamless care for a single day; such care is often disconcerting for patients, families, case managers, and consultants. In situations such as significant census spikes, this may be a necessary evil, but avoid this if you can.

Orphan shift duties

If you can’t avoid an orphan rounding shift, be creative regarding which patients get assigned. Can that provider cover observation or simple short stay patients who may be discharged, or consult follow ups that may be signed off? Can they see stable long-stay patients where the plan isn’t changing and the patient isn’t going anywhere? (Think guardianships, chronic ventilated patients awaiting a facility, stable patients with a history of intravenous drug abuse who may not be safely discharged with a line, etc.) Can they do lab, culture, or path report follow-up calls? Getting creative in responsibilities for an orphan shift can benefit all involved.

Rounding shifts following admitting shifts

Dedicated admitting and rounding shifts are the norm these days. But rather than a pure stretch of one or the other, consider a few days admitting followed by the rest of the stretch rounding. Particularly in a small- to mid-sized hospital, multiple admits done over a few days (and especially if also cross-covering floor calls) will mean many familiar cases when rounding thereafter.

Standard sign-out that travels with patients

The hospital is a dynamic environment. Patients, providers and staff move around a lot. Given this reality, the importance of a complete standardized and accessible sign-out is paramount.

Imagine a rounder starting their last day with 15 patients. By the end of the shift, some have been discharged, transferred to telemetry or the ICU, or left against medical advice, leaving seven patients to sign out. By the next day, there are eight new faces, including fresh admits or consults from the prior day, swing, and night providers as well as existing patients transferred from telemetry/ICU to the general medical ward. A practical solution incorporates an asynchronous sign-out that travels with the patient regardless of geographic location or which provider(s) are following them. Billing software or census reports can typically achieve this. Of course, allow for additional verbal communication as necessary and appropriate.
 

Geographic rounds, with exceptions

Geographic rounds make a lot of sense most of the time. Less transit time and phone tag and more frequent interactions with the care team make for a more efficient day. But sometimes it’s best to bend this rule.

A patient that you’ve seen for 5 days and was transferred off your telemetry floor to go home tomorrow might best be served by you trekking up a flight of stairs to do the discharge. Similarly, complicated medical, psychosocial, or other circumstances may argue for keeping the patient on your list despite a change in location.

The above rules are foundational elements for good continuity. Two bonus considerations include:
 

Wind up, wind down

It’s difficult to walk into a full panel of patients especially when many have been in house for a while. Consider overlapping providers coming onto and going off a shared service.

In a buddy arrangement the oncoming provider starting would take new patients from the outgoing provider finishing. The provider finishing discharges patients with long length of stays and continues to round on more-complicated patients with whom they are familiar. Opportunities for face-to-face verbal handover, and even bedside introduction to the provider starting, can improve care coordination and safety and enhance the patient experience.
 

Reconsider split rounding and admitting

Most physicians would attest that the second time seeing a patient is much easier than the first, the third easier than the second, and so on. This holds true even more so when the first encounter is the history and physical, and the provider subsequently rounds on the patient for the duration of the hospitalization.

You know what the plan is because you made it; you are confident that the patient’s leg with cellulitis looks better or the patient with congested lungs sounds clearer because the baseline against which you’re comparing is your own. It can be a challenge to interrupt a busy day of clinical rounds, discharges, and interdisciplinary meetings to admit a patient. But the upstream investment pays rich downstream dividends and is well worth consideration.

Hospital medicine outcomes as measured by cost, quality, and patient and provider experience are often hampered by suboptimal continuity of care. With recognition of the problem and some simple operational adjustments as outlined above, your team can minimize negative impacts.

Dr. Krisa is a former regional medical director for a national hospitalist group and currently serves as a physician advisor for St. Peter’s Health Partners, a large integrated health system in Albany, N.Y. You can contact him at [email protected].

Although there are many benefits to the hospital medicine model of inpatient care, there is perhaps no greater Achilles heel than the discontinuity inherent to the care model. The trust and familiarity garnered from longitudinal patient-provider relationships is sacrificed for the benefits of focused practice, efficiency, and enhanced availability.

Any system involves competing priorities, and some degree of discontinuity is inevitable. Would it make sense for a hospitalist to stay on service until every panel patient is discharged? For obvious economic, lifestyle, and other reasons, of course not. Our charge then is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, but to ensure thoughtful and consistent continuity for the good of the patient, the provider, and the hospital. The following tips should help your team achieve the best possible balance.
 

Avoid orphan rounding shifts

An “orphan” rounding shift refers to a single shift untethered to a stretch. For admitting or administrative duties, this generally poses no problem, but for a rounding shift it is undesirable. No matter how talented or industrious the provider, it is very difficult for them to effectively provide seamless care for a single day; such care is often disconcerting for patients, families, case managers, and consultants. In situations such as significant census spikes, this may be a necessary evil, but avoid this if you can.

Orphan shift duties

If you can’t avoid an orphan rounding shift, be creative regarding which patients get assigned. Can that provider cover observation or simple short stay patients who may be discharged, or consult follow ups that may be signed off? Can they see stable long-stay patients where the plan isn’t changing and the patient isn’t going anywhere? (Think guardianships, chronic ventilated patients awaiting a facility, stable patients with a history of intravenous drug abuse who may not be safely discharged with a line, etc.) Can they do lab, culture, or path report follow-up calls? Getting creative in responsibilities for an orphan shift can benefit all involved.

Rounding shifts following admitting shifts

Dedicated admitting and rounding shifts are the norm these days. But rather than a pure stretch of one or the other, consider a few days admitting followed by the rest of the stretch rounding. Particularly in a small- to mid-sized hospital, multiple admits done over a few days (and especially if also cross-covering floor calls) will mean many familiar cases when rounding thereafter.

Standard sign-out that travels with patients

The hospital is a dynamic environment. Patients, providers and staff move around a lot. Given this reality, the importance of a complete standardized and accessible sign-out is paramount.

Imagine a rounder starting their last day with 15 patients. By the end of the shift, some have been discharged, transferred to telemetry or the ICU, or left against medical advice, leaving seven patients to sign out. By the next day, there are eight new faces, including fresh admits or consults from the prior day, swing, and night providers as well as existing patients transferred from telemetry/ICU to the general medical ward. A practical solution incorporates an asynchronous sign-out that travels with the patient regardless of geographic location or which provider(s) are following them. Billing software or census reports can typically achieve this. Of course, allow for additional verbal communication as necessary and appropriate.
 

Geographic rounds, with exceptions

Geographic rounds make a lot of sense most of the time. Less transit time and phone tag and more frequent interactions with the care team make for a more efficient day. But sometimes it’s best to bend this rule.

A patient that you’ve seen for 5 days and was transferred off your telemetry floor to go home tomorrow might best be served by you trekking up a flight of stairs to do the discharge. Similarly, complicated medical, psychosocial, or other circumstances may argue for keeping the patient on your list despite a change in location.

The above rules are foundational elements for good continuity. Two bonus considerations include:
 

Wind up, wind down

It’s difficult to walk into a full panel of patients especially when many have been in house for a while. Consider overlapping providers coming onto and going off a shared service.

In a buddy arrangement the oncoming provider starting would take new patients from the outgoing provider finishing. The provider finishing discharges patients with long length of stays and continues to round on more-complicated patients with whom they are familiar. Opportunities for face-to-face verbal handover, and even bedside introduction to the provider starting, can improve care coordination and safety and enhance the patient experience.
 

Reconsider split rounding and admitting

Most physicians would attest that the second time seeing a patient is much easier than the first, the third easier than the second, and so on. This holds true even more so when the first encounter is the history and physical, and the provider subsequently rounds on the patient for the duration of the hospitalization.

You know what the plan is because you made it; you are confident that the patient’s leg with cellulitis looks better or the patient with congested lungs sounds clearer because the baseline against which you’re comparing is your own. It can be a challenge to interrupt a busy day of clinical rounds, discharges, and interdisciplinary meetings to admit a patient. But the upstream investment pays rich downstream dividends and is well worth consideration.

Hospital medicine outcomes as measured by cost, quality, and patient and provider experience are often hampered by suboptimal continuity of care. With recognition of the problem and some simple operational adjustments as outlined above, your team can minimize negative impacts.

Dr. Krisa is a former regional medical director for a national hospitalist group and currently serves as a physician advisor for St. Peter’s Health Partners, a large integrated health system in Albany, N.Y. You can contact him at [email protected].

Although there are many benefits to the hospital medicine model of inpatient care, there is perhaps no greater Achilles heel than the discontinuity inherent to the care model. The trust and familiarity garnered from longitudinal patient-provider relationships is sacrificed for the benefits of focused practice, efficiency, and enhanced availability.

Any system involves competing priorities, and some degree of discontinuity is inevitable. Would it make sense for a hospitalist to stay on service until every panel patient is discharged? For obvious economic, lifestyle, and other reasons, of course not. Our charge then is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, but to ensure thoughtful and consistent continuity for the good of the patient, the provider, and the hospital. The following tips should help your team achieve the best possible balance.
 

Avoid orphan rounding shifts

An “orphan” rounding shift refers to a single shift untethered to a stretch. For admitting or administrative duties, this generally poses no problem, but for a rounding shift it is undesirable. No matter how talented or industrious the provider, it is very difficult for them to effectively provide seamless care for a single day; such care is often disconcerting for patients, families, case managers, and consultants. In situations such as significant census spikes, this may be a necessary evil, but avoid this if you can.

Orphan shift duties

If you can’t avoid an orphan rounding shift, be creative regarding which patients get assigned. Can that provider cover observation or simple short stay patients who may be discharged, or consult follow ups that may be signed off? Can they see stable long-stay patients where the plan isn’t changing and the patient isn’t going anywhere? (Think guardianships, chronic ventilated patients awaiting a facility, stable patients with a history of intravenous drug abuse who may not be safely discharged with a line, etc.) Can they do lab, culture, or path report follow-up calls? Getting creative in responsibilities for an orphan shift can benefit all involved.

Rounding shifts following admitting shifts

Dedicated admitting and rounding shifts are the norm these days. But rather than a pure stretch of one or the other, consider a few days admitting followed by the rest of the stretch rounding. Particularly in a small- to mid-sized hospital, multiple admits done over a few days (and especially if also cross-covering floor calls) will mean many familiar cases when rounding thereafter.

Standard sign-out that travels with patients

The hospital is a dynamic environment. Patients, providers and staff move around a lot. Given this reality, the importance of a complete standardized and accessible sign-out is paramount.

Imagine a rounder starting their last day with 15 patients. By the end of the shift, some have been discharged, transferred to telemetry or the ICU, or left against medical advice, leaving seven patients to sign out. By the next day, there are eight new faces, including fresh admits or consults from the prior day, swing, and night providers as well as existing patients transferred from telemetry/ICU to the general medical ward. A practical solution incorporates an asynchronous sign-out that travels with the patient regardless of geographic location or which provider(s) are following them. Billing software or census reports can typically achieve this. Of course, allow for additional verbal communication as necessary and appropriate.
 

Geographic rounds, with exceptions

Geographic rounds make a lot of sense most of the time. Less transit time and phone tag and more frequent interactions with the care team make for a more efficient day. But sometimes it’s best to bend this rule.

A patient that you’ve seen for 5 days and was transferred off your telemetry floor to go home tomorrow might best be served by you trekking up a flight of stairs to do the discharge. Similarly, complicated medical, psychosocial, or other circumstances may argue for keeping the patient on your list despite a change in location.

The above rules are foundational elements for good continuity. Two bonus considerations include:
 

Wind up, wind down

It’s difficult to walk into a full panel of patients especially when many have been in house for a while. Consider overlapping providers coming onto and going off a shared service.

In a buddy arrangement the oncoming provider starting would take new patients from the outgoing provider finishing. The provider finishing discharges patients with long length of stays and continues to round on more-complicated patients with whom they are familiar. Opportunities for face-to-face verbal handover, and even bedside introduction to the provider starting, can improve care coordination and safety and enhance the patient experience.
 

Reconsider split rounding and admitting

Most physicians would attest that the second time seeing a patient is much easier than the first, the third easier than the second, and so on. This holds true even more so when the first encounter is the history and physical, and the provider subsequently rounds on the patient for the duration of the hospitalization.

You know what the plan is because you made it; you are confident that the patient’s leg with cellulitis looks better or the patient with congested lungs sounds clearer because the baseline against which you’re comparing is your own. It can be a challenge to interrupt a busy day of clinical rounds, discharges, and interdisciplinary meetings to admit a patient. But the upstream investment pays rich downstream dividends and is well worth consideration.

Hospital medicine outcomes as measured by cost, quality, and patient and provider experience are often hampered by suboptimal continuity of care. With recognition of the problem and some simple operational adjustments as outlined above, your team can minimize negative impacts.

Dr. Krisa is a former regional medical director for a national hospitalist group and currently serves as a physician advisor for St. Peter’s Health Partners, a large integrated health system in Albany, N.Y. You can contact him at [email protected].

Background: Acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections (ABSSSIs) continue to account for substantial morbidity and health care burden, with the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens further complicating their management. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of causative agents of ABSSSI, including Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus (including methicillin-resistant strains, or MRSA), and Enterococcus spp.

Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (84.8% vs. 85.5%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (86.1% vs. 83.6%). Efficacy was similar for methicillin-susceptible or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the most common isolated pathogens. Frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was also similar in the two groups. Mean duration of IV therapy was 4.4 days, and mean duration of oral therapy was 5.5 days in the omadacycline group.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as linezolid in the treatment of ABSSSIs.

Citation: O’Riordan W et al. Omadacycline for acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:528-38.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Background: Acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections (ABSSSIs) continue to account for substantial morbidity and health care burden, with the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens further complicating their management. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of causative agents of ABSSSI, including Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus (including methicillin-resistant strains, or MRSA), and Enterococcus spp.

Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (84.8% vs. 85.5%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (86.1% vs. 83.6%). Efficacy was similar for methicillin-susceptible or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the most common isolated pathogens. Frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was also similar in the two groups. Mean duration of IV therapy was 4.4 days, and mean duration of oral therapy was 5.5 days in the omadacycline group.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as linezolid in the treatment of ABSSSIs.

Citation: O’Riordan W et al. Omadacycline for acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:528-38.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Background: Acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections (ABSSSIs) continue to account for substantial morbidity and health care burden, with the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens further complicating their management. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of causative agents of ABSSSI, including Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus (including methicillin-resistant strains, or MRSA), and Enterococcus spp.

Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (84.8% vs. 85.5%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (86.1% vs. 83.6%). Efficacy was similar for methicillin-susceptible or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the most common isolated pathogens. Frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was also similar in the two groups. Mean duration of IV therapy was 4.4 days, and mean duration of oral therapy was 5.5 days in the omadacycline group.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as linezolid in the treatment of ABSSSIs.

Citation: O’Riordan W et al. Omadacycline for acute bacterial skin and skin-structure infections. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:528-38.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

As U.S. health care systems prepare for inpatient surges linked to hospitalizations of critically ill COVID-19 patients, two hospitalists with med-peds training (combined training in internal medicine and pediatrics) have launched an innovative solution to help facilities deal with the challenge.

The Pediatric Overflow Planning Contingency Response Network (POPCoRN network) has quickly linked almost 400 physicians and other health professionals, including hospitalists, attending physicians, residents, medical students, and nurses. The network wants to help provide more information about how pediatric-focused institutions can safely gear up to admit adult patients in children’s hospitals, in order to offset the predicted demand for hospital beds for patients with COVID-19.

According to the POPCoRN network website (www.popcornetwork.org), the majority of providers who have contacted the network say they have already started or are committed to planning for their pediatric facilities to be used for adult overflow. The Children’s Hospital Association has issued a guidance on this kind of community collaboration for children’s hospitals partnering with adult hospitals in their community and with policy makers.

“We are a network of folks from different institutions, many med-peds–trained hospitalists but quickly growing,” said Leah Ratner, MD, a second-year fellow in the Global Pediatrics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and cofounder of the POPCoRN network. “We came together to think about how to increase capacity – both in the work force and for actual hospital space – by helping to train pediatric hospitalists and pediatrics-trained nurses to care for adult patients.”

A web-based platform filled with a rapidly expanding list of resources, an active Twitter account, and utilization of Zoom networking software for webinars and working group meetings have facilitated the network’s growth. “Social media has helped us,” Dr. Ratner said. But equally important are personal connections.

“It all started just a few weeks ago,” added cofounder Ashley Jenkins, MD, a med-peds hospital medicine and general academics research fellow in the division of hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “I sent out some emails in mid-March, asking what other people were doing about these issues. Leah and I met as a result of these initial emails. We immediately started connecting with other health systems and it just expanded from there. Once we knew that enough other systems were thinking about it and trying to build capacity, we started pulling the people and information together.”
 

High-yield one-pagers

A third or more of those on the POPCoRN contact list are also participating as volunteers on its varied working groups, including health system operation groups exploring the needs of three distinct hospital models: freestanding children’s hospitals; community hospitals, which may see small numbers of children; and integrated mixed hospitals, which often means a pediatric hospital or pediatric units located within an adult hospital.

An immediate goal is to develop high-yield informational “one-pagers,” culling essential clinical facts on a variety of topics in adult inpatient medicine that may no longer be familiar to working pediatric hospitalists. These one-pagers, designed with the help of network members with graphic design skills, address topics such as syncope or chest pain or managing exacerbation of COPD in adults. They draw upon existing informational sources, encapsulating practical information tips that can be used at the bedside, including test workups, differential diagnoses, treatment approaches, and other pearls for providers. Drafts are reviewed for content by specialists, and then by pediatricians to make sure the information covers what they need.

Also under development are educational materials for nurses trained in pediatrics, a section for outpatient providers redeployed to triage or telehealth, and information for other team members including occupational, physical, and respiratory therapists. Another section offers critical care lectures for the nonintensivist. A metrics and outcomes working group is looking for ways to evaluate how the network is doing and who is being reached without having to ask frontline providers to fill out surveys.

Dr. Ratner and Dr. Jenkins have created an intentional structure for encouraging mentoring. They also call on their own mentors – Ahmet Uluer, DO, director of Weitzman Family Bridges Adult Transition Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Brian Herbst Jr., MD, medical director of the Hospital Medicine Adult Care Service at Cincinnati Children’s – for advice.
 

Beyond the silos

Pediatric hospitalists may have been doing similar things, working on similar projects, but not necessarily reaching out to each other across a system that tends to promote staying within administrative silos, Dr. Uluer said. “Through our personal contacts in POPCoRN, we’ve been able to reach beyond the silos. This network has worked like medical crowd sourcing, and the founders have been inspirational.”

Dr. Herbst added, “How do we expand bandwidth and safely expand services to take young patients and adults from other hospitals? What other populations do we need to expand to take? This network is a workplace of ideas. It’s amazing to see what has been built in a few weeks and how useful it can be.”

Med-peds hospitalists are an important resource for bridging the two specialties. Their experience with transitioning young adults with long-standing chronic conditions of childhood, who have received most of their care at a children’s hospital before reaching adulthood, offers a helpful model. “We’ve also tried to target junior physicians who could step up into leadership roles and to pull in medical students – who are the backbone of this network through their administrative support,” Dr. Jenkins said.

Marie Pfarr, MD, also a med-peds trained hospital medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children’s, was contacted in March by Dr. Jenkins. “She said they had this brainstorm, and they were getting feedback that it would be helpful to provide educational materials for pediatric providers. Because I have an interest in medical education, she asked if I wanted to help. I was at home struggling with what I could contribute during this crazy time, so I said yes.”

Dr. Pfarr leads POPCoRN’s educational working group, which came up with a list of 50 topics in need of one-pagers and people willing to create them, mostly still under development. The aim for the one-pagers is to offer a good starting point for pediatricians, helping them, for example, to ask the right questions during history and physical exams. “We also want to offer additional resources for those who want to do a deeper dive.”

Dr. Pfarr said she has enjoyed working closely with medical students, who really want to help. “That’s been great to see. We are all working toward the same goal, and we help to keep each other in check. I think there’s a future for this kind of mobilization through collaborations to connect pediatric to adult providers. A lot of good things will come out of the network, which is an example of how folks can talk to each other. It’s very dynamic and changing every day.”

One of those medical students is Chinma Onyewuenyi, finishing her fourth year at Baylor College of Medicine. Scheduled to start a med-peds residency at Geisinger Health on July 1, she had completed all of her rotations and was looking for ways to get involved in the pandemic response while respecting the shelter-in-place order. “I had heard about the network, which was recruiting medical students to play administrative roles for the working groups. I said, ‘If you have anything else you need help with, I have time on my hands.’”

Ms. Onyewuenyi says she fell into the role of a lead administrative volunteer, and her responsibilities grew from there, eventually taking charge of all the medical students’ recruiting, screening, and assignments, freeing up the project’s physician leaders from administrative tasks. “I wanted something active to do to contribute, and I appreciate all that I’m learning. With a master’s degree in public health, I have researched how health care is delivered,” she said.

“This experience has really opened my eyes to what’s required to deliver care, and just the level of collaboration that needs to go on with something like this. Even as a medical student, I felt glad to have an opportunity to contribute beyond the administrative tasks. At meetings, they ask for my opinion.”


 

Equitable access to resources

Another major focus for the network is promoting health equity – giving pediatric providers and health systems equitable access to information that meets their needs, Dr. Ratner said. “We’ve made a particular effort to reach out to hospitals that are the most vulnerable, including rural hospitals, and to those serving the most vulnerable patients,” she noted. These also include the homeless and refugees.

“We’ve been trying to be mindful of avoiding the sometimes-intimidating power structure that has been traditional in medicine,” Dr. Ratner said. The network’s equity working group is trying to provide content with structural competency and cultural humility. “We’re learning a lot about the ways the health care system is broken,” she added. “We all agree that we have a fragmented health care system, but there are ways to make it less fragmented and learn from each other.”

In the tragedy of the COVID epidemic, there are also unique opportunities to learn to work collaboratively and make the health care system stronger for those in greatest need, Dr. Ratner added. “What we hope is that our network becomes an example of that, even as it is moving so quickly.”

Audrey Uong, MD, an attending physician in the division of hospital medicine at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, connected with POPCoRN for an educational presentation reviewing resuscitation in adult patients. She wanted to talk with peers about what’s going on, so as not to feel alone in her practice. She has also found the network’s website useful for identifying educational resources.

“As pediatricians, we have been asked to care for adult patients. One of our units has been admitting mostly patients under age 30, and we are accepting older patients in another unit on the pediatric wing.” This kind of thing is also happening in a lot of other places, Dr. Uong said. Keeping up with these changes in her own practice has been challenging.

She tries to take one day at a time. “Everyone at this institution feels the same – that we’re locked in on meeting the need. Even our child life specialists, when they’re not working with younger patients, have created this amazing support room for staff, with snacks and soothing music. There’s been a lot of attention paid to making us feel supported in this work.”

As U.S. health care systems prepare for inpatient surges linked to hospitalizations of critically ill COVID-19 patients, two hospitalists with med-peds training (combined training in internal medicine and pediatrics) have launched an innovative solution to help facilities deal with the challenge.

The Pediatric Overflow Planning Contingency Response Network (POPCoRN network) has quickly linked almost 400 physicians and other health professionals, including hospitalists, attending physicians, residents, medical students, and nurses. The network wants to help provide more information about how pediatric-focused institutions can safely gear up to admit adult patients in children’s hospitals, in order to offset the predicted demand for hospital beds for patients with COVID-19.

According to the POPCoRN network website (www.popcornetwork.org), the majority of providers who have contacted the network say they have already started or are committed to planning for their pediatric facilities to be used for adult overflow. The Children’s Hospital Association has issued a guidance on this kind of community collaboration for children’s hospitals partnering with adult hospitals in their community and with policy makers.

“We are a network of folks from different institutions, many med-peds–trained hospitalists but quickly growing,” said Leah Ratner, MD, a second-year fellow in the Global Pediatrics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and cofounder of the POPCoRN network. “We came together to think about how to increase capacity – both in the work force and for actual hospital space – by helping to train pediatric hospitalists and pediatrics-trained nurses to care for adult patients.”

A web-based platform filled with a rapidly expanding list of resources, an active Twitter account, and utilization of Zoom networking software for webinars and working group meetings have facilitated the network’s growth. “Social media has helped us,” Dr. Ratner said. But equally important are personal connections.

“It all started just a few weeks ago,” added cofounder Ashley Jenkins, MD, a med-peds hospital medicine and general academics research fellow in the division of hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “I sent out some emails in mid-March, asking what other people were doing about these issues. Leah and I met as a result of these initial emails. We immediately started connecting with other health systems and it just expanded from there. Once we knew that enough other systems were thinking about it and trying to build capacity, we started pulling the people and information together.”
 

High-yield one-pagers

A third or more of those on the POPCoRN contact list are also participating as volunteers on its varied working groups, including health system operation groups exploring the needs of three distinct hospital models: freestanding children’s hospitals; community hospitals, which may see small numbers of children; and integrated mixed hospitals, which often means a pediatric hospital or pediatric units located within an adult hospital.

An immediate goal is to develop high-yield informational “one-pagers,” culling essential clinical facts on a variety of topics in adult inpatient medicine that may no longer be familiar to working pediatric hospitalists. These one-pagers, designed with the help of network members with graphic design skills, address topics such as syncope or chest pain or managing exacerbation of COPD in adults. They draw upon existing informational sources, encapsulating practical information tips that can be used at the bedside, including test workups, differential diagnoses, treatment approaches, and other pearls for providers. Drafts are reviewed for content by specialists, and then by pediatricians to make sure the information covers what they need.

Also under development are educational materials for nurses trained in pediatrics, a section for outpatient providers redeployed to triage or telehealth, and information for other team members including occupational, physical, and respiratory therapists. Another section offers critical care lectures for the nonintensivist. A metrics and outcomes working group is looking for ways to evaluate how the network is doing and who is being reached without having to ask frontline providers to fill out surveys.

Dr. Ratner and Dr. Jenkins have created an intentional structure for encouraging mentoring. They also call on their own mentors – Ahmet Uluer, DO, director of Weitzman Family Bridges Adult Transition Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Brian Herbst Jr., MD, medical director of the Hospital Medicine Adult Care Service at Cincinnati Children’s – for advice.
 

Beyond the silos

Pediatric hospitalists may have been doing similar things, working on similar projects, but not necessarily reaching out to each other across a system that tends to promote staying within administrative silos, Dr. Uluer said. “Through our personal contacts in POPCoRN, we’ve been able to reach beyond the silos. This network has worked like medical crowd sourcing, and the founders have been inspirational.”

Dr. Herbst added, “How do we expand bandwidth and safely expand services to take young patients and adults from other hospitals? What other populations do we need to expand to take? This network is a workplace of ideas. It’s amazing to see what has been built in a few weeks and how useful it can be.”

Med-peds hospitalists are an important resource for bridging the two specialties. Their experience with transitioning young adults with long-standing chronic conditions of childhood, who have received most of their care at a children’s hospital before reaching adulthood, offers a helpful model. “We’ve also tried to target junior physicians who could step up into leadership roles and to pull in medical students – who are the backbone of this network through their administrative support,” Dr. Jenkins said.

Marie Pfarr, MD, also a med-peds trained hospital medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children’s, was contacted in March by Dr. Jenkins. “She said they had this brainstorm, and they were getting feedback that it would be helpful to provide educational materials for pediatric providers. Because I have an interest in medical education, she asked if I wanted to help. I was at home struggling with what I could contribute during this crazy time, so I said yes.”

Dr. Pfarr leads POPCoRN’s educational working group, which came up with a list of 50 topics in need of one-pagers and people willing to create them, mostly still under development. The aim for the one-pagers is to offer a good starting point for pediatricians, helping them, for example, to ask the right questions during history and physical exams. “We also want to offer additional resources for those who want to do a deeper dive.”

Dr. Pfarr said she has enjoyed working closely with medical students, who really want to help. “That’s been great to see. We are all working toward the same goal, and we help to keep each other in check. I think there’s a future for this kind of mobilization through collaborations to connect pediatric to adult providers. A lot of good things will come out of the network, which is an example of how folks can talk to each other. It’s very dynamic and changing every day.”

One of those medical students is Chinma Onyewuenyi, finishing her fourth year at Baylor College of Medicine. Scheduled to start a med-peds residency at Geisinger Health on July 1, she had completed all of her rotations and was looking for ways to get involved in the pandemic response while respecting the shelter-in-place order. “I had heard about the network, which was recruiting medical students to play administrative roles for the working groups. I said, ‘If you have anything else you need help with, I have time on my hands.’”

Ms. Onyewuenyi says she fell into the role of a lead administrative volunteer, and her responsibilities grew from there, eventually taking charge of all the medical students’ recruiting, screening, and assignments, freeing up the project’s physician leaders from administrative tasks. “I wanted something active to do to contribute, and I appreciate all that I’m learning. With a master’s degree in public health, I have researched how health care is delivered,” she said.

“This experience has really opened my eyes to what’s required to deliver care, and just the level of collaboration that needs to go on with something like this. Even as a medical student, I felt glad to have an opportunity to contribute beyond the administrative tasks. At meetings, they ask for my opinion.”


 

Equitable access to resources

Another major focus for the network is promoting health equity – giving pediatric providers and health systems equitable access to information that meets their needs, Dr. Ratner said. “We’ve made a particular effort to reach out to hospitals that are the most vulnerable, including rural hospitals, and to those serving the most vulnerable patients,” she noted. These also include the homeless and refugees.

“We’ve been trying to be mindful of avoiding the sometimes-intimidating power structure that has been traditional in medicine,” Dr. Ratner said. The network’s equity working group is trying to provide content with structural competency and cultural humility. “We’re learning a lot about the ways the health care system is broken,” she added. “We all agree that we have a fragmented health care system, but there are ways to make it less fragmented and learn from each other.”

In the tragedy of the COVID epidemic, there are also unique opportunities to learn to work collaboratively and make the health care system stronger for those in greatest need, Dr. Ratner added. “What we hope is that our network becomes an example of that, even as it is moving so quickly.”

Audrey Uong, MD, an attending physician in the division of hospital medicine at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, connected with POPCoRN for an educational presentation reviewing resuscitation in adult patients. She wanted to talk with peers about what’s going on, so as not to feel alone in her practice. She has also found the network’s website useful for identifying educational resources.

“As pediatricians, we have been asked to care for adult patients. One of our units has been admitting mostly patients under age 30, and we are accepting older patients in another unit on the pediatric wing.” This kind of thing is also happening in a lot of other places, Dr. Uong said. Keeping up with these changes in her own practice has been challenging.

She tries to take one day at a time. “Everyone at this institution feels the same – that we’re locked in on meeting the need. Even our child life specialists, when they’re not working with younger patients, have created this amazing support room for staff, with snacks and soothing music. There’s been a lot of attention paid to making us feel supported in this work.”

As U.S. health care systems prepare for inpatient surges linked to hospitalizations of critically ill COVID-19 patients, two hospitalists with med-peds training (combined training in internal medicine and pediatrics) have launched an innovative solution to help facilities deal with the challenge.

The Pediatric Overflow Planning Contingency Response Network (POPCoRN network) has quickly linked almost 400 physicians and other health professionals, including hospitalists, attending physicians, residents, medical students, and nurses. The network wants to help provide more information about how pediatric-focused institutions can safely gear up to admit adult patients in children’s hospitals, in order to offset the predicted demand for hospital beds for patients with COVID-19.

According to the POPCoRN network website (www.popcornetwork.org), the majority of providers who have contacted the network say they have already started or are committed to planning for their pediatric facilities to be used for adult overflow. The Children’s Hospital Association has issued a guidance on this kind of community collaboration for children’s hospitals partnering with adult hospitals in their community and with policy makers.

“We are a network of folks from different institutions, many med-peds–trained hospitalists but quickly growing,” said Leah Ratner, MD, a second-year fellow in the Global Pediatrics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and cofounder of the POPCoRN network. “We came together to think about how to increase capacity – both in the work force and for actual hospital space – by helping to train pediatric hospitalists and pediatrics-trained nurses to care for adult patients.”

A web-based platform filled with a rapidly expanding list of resources, an active Twitter account, and utilization of Zoom networking software for webinars and working group meetings have facilitated the network’s growth. “Social media has helped us,” Dr. Ratner said. But equally important are personal connections.

“It all started just a few weeks ago,” added cofounder Ashley Jenkins, MD, a med-peds hospital medicine and general academics research fellow in the division of hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “I sent out some emails in mid-March, asking what other people were doing about these issues. Leah and I met as a result of these initial emails. We immediately started connecting with other health systems and it just expanded from there. Once we knew that enough other systems were thinking about it and trying to build capacity, we started pulling the people and information together.”
 

High-yield one-pagers

A third or more of those on the POPCoRN contact list are also participating as volunteers on its varied working groups, including health system operation groups exploring the needs of three distinct hospital models: freestanding children’s hospitals; community hospitals, which may see small numbers of children; and integrated mixed hospitals, which often means a pediatric hospital or pediatric units located within an adult hospital.

An immediate goal is to develop high-yield informational “one-pagers,” culling essential clinical facts on a variety of topics in adult inpatient medicine that may no longer be familiar to working pediatric hospitalists. These one-pagers, designed with the help of network members with graphic design skills, address topics such as syncope or chest pain or managing exacerbation of COPD in adults. They draw upon existing informational sources, encapsulating practical information tips that can be used at the bedside, including test workups, differential diagnoses, treatment approaches, and other pearls for providers. Drafts are reviewed for content by specialists, and then by pediatricians to make sure the information covers what they need.

Also under development are educational materials for nurses trained in pediatrics, a section for outpatient providers redeployed to triage or telehealth, and information for other team members including occupational, physical, and respiratory therapists. Another section offers critical care lectures for the nonintensivist. A metrics and outcomes working group is looking for ways to evaluate how the network is doing and who is being reached without having to ask frontline providers to fill out surveys.

Dr. Ratner and Dr. Jenkins have created an intentional structure for encouraging mentoring. They also call on their own mentors – Ahmet Uluer, DO, director of Weitzman Family Bridges Adult Transition Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Brian Herbst Jr., MD, medical director of the Hospital Medicine Adult Care Service at Cincinnati Children’s – for advice.
 

Beyond the silos

Pediatric hospitalists may have been doing similar things, working on similar projects, but not necessarily reaching out to each other across a system that tends to promote staying within administrative silos, Dr. Uluer said. “Through our personal contacts in POPCoRN, we’ve been able to reach beyond the silos. This network has worked like medical crowd sourcing, and the founders have been inspirational.”

Dr. Herbst added, “How do we expand bandwidth and safely expand services to take young patients and adults from other hospitals? What other populations do we need to expand to take? This network is a workplace of ideas. It’s amazing to see what has been built in a few weeks and how useful it can be.”

Med-peds hospitalists are an important resource for bridging the two specialties. Their experience with transitioning young adults with long-standing chronic conditions of childhood, who have received most of their care at a children’s hospital before reaching adulthood, offers a helpful model. “We’ve also tried to target junior physicians who could step up into leadership roles and to pull in medical students – who are the backbone of this network through their administrative support,” Dr. Jenkins said.

Marie Pfarr, MD, also a med-peds trained hospital medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children’s, was contacted in March by Dr. Jenkins. “She said they had this brainstorm, and they were getting feedback that it would be helpful to provide educational materials for pediatric providers. Because I have an interest in medical education, she asked if I wanted to help. I was at home struggling with what I could contribute during this crazy time, so I said yes.”

Dr. Pfarr leads POPCoRN’s educational working group, which came up with a list of 50 topics in need of one-pagers and people willing to create them, mostly still under development. The aim for the one-pagers is to offer a good starting point for pediatricians, helping them, for example, to ask the right questions during history and physical exams. “We also want to offer additional resources for those who want to do a deeper dive.”

Dr. Pfarr said she has enjoyed working closely with medical students, who really want to help. “That’s been great to see. We are all working toward the same goal, and we help to keep each other in check. I think there’s a future for this kind of mobilization through collaborations to connect pediatric to adult providers. A lot of good things will come out of the network, which is an example of how folks can talk to each other. It’s very dynamic and changing every day.”

One of those medical students is Chinma Onyewuenyi, finishing her fourth year at Baylor College of Medicine. Scheduled to start a med-peds residency at Geisinger Health on July 1, she had completed all of her rotations and was looking for ways to get involved in the pandemic response while respecting the shelter-in-place order. “I had heard about the network, which was recruiting medical students to play administrative roles for the working groups. I said, ‘If you have anything else you need help with, I have time on my hands.’”

Ms. Onyewuenyi says she fell into the role of a lead administrative volunteer, and her responsibilities grew from there, eventually taking charge of all the medical students’ recruiting, screening, and assignments, freeing up the project’s physician leaders from administrative tasks. “I wanted something active to do to contribute, and I appreciate all that I’m learning. With a master’s degree in public health, I have researched how health care is delivered,” she said.

“This experience has really opened my eyes to what’s required to deliver care, and just the level of collaboration that needs to go on with something like this. Even as a medical student, I felt glad to have an opportunity to contribute beyond the administrative tasks. At meetings, they ask for my opinion.”


 

Equitable access to resources

Another major focus for the network is promoting health equity – giving pediatric providers and health systems equitable access to information that meets their needs, Dr. Ratner said. “We’ve made a particular effort to reach out to hospitals that are the most vulnerable, including rural hospitals, and to those serving the most vulnerable patients,” she noted. These also include the homeless and refugees.

“We’ve been trying to be mindful of avoiding the sometimes-intimidating power structure that has been traditional in medicine,” Dr. Ratner said. The network’s equity working group is trying to provide content with structural competency and cultural humility. “We’re learning a lot about the ways the health care system is broken,” she added. “We all agree that we have a fragmented health care system, but there are ways to make it less fragmented and learn from each other.”

In the tragedy of the COVID epidemic, there are also unique opportunities to learn to work collaboratively and make the health care system stronger for those in greatest need, Dr. Ratner added. “What we hope is that our network becomes an example of that, even as it is moving so quickly.”

Audrey Uong, MD, an attending physician in the division of hospital medicine at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, connected with POPCoRN for an educational presentation reviewing resuscitation in adult patients. She wanted to talk with peers about what’s going on, so as not to feel alone in her practice. She has also found the network’s website useful for identifying educational resources.

“As pediatricians, we have been asked to care for adult patients. One of our units has been admitting mostly patients under age 30, and we are accepting older patients in another unit on the pediatric wing.” This kind of thing is also happening in a lot of other places, Dr. Uong said. Keeping up with these changes in her own practice has been challenging.

She tries to take one day at a time. “Everyone at this institution feels the same – that we’re locked in on meeting the need. Even our child life specialists, when they’re not working with younger patients, have created this amazing support room for staff, with snacks and soothing music. There’s been a lot of attention paid to making us feel supported in this work.”

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a leading cause of hospitalization and death, particularly in the elderly. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of CAP pathogens, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenzae, and atypical organisms, such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Legionella pneumophila, and Chlamydia pneumoniae.

Study design: Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, placebo-controlled trial.

Setting: Hospitalized patients (98.8%) in non-ICU settings at 86 sites in Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Synopsis: The trial recruited 774 adults with three or more CAP symptoms (cough, purulent sputum production, dyspnea, or pleuritic chest pain) and at least two abnormal vital signs, one or more clinical signs or laboratory findings associated with CAP, radiologically confirmed pneumonia, and a Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) of II, III, or IV (with higher class numbers indicating a greater risk of death). Exclusion criteria included having clinically significant liver or renal insufficiency or having an immunocompromised state. The patients were randomized to receive either omadacycline or moxifloxacin intravenously with the option to switch to the oral preparation of the respective drugs after at least 3 days of therapy. Atypical organisms were implicated in 67% of CAPS with known cause, while Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae were implicated in 20% and 12%, respectively. Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (81.1% vs 82.7%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (87.6% vs. 85.1%). Mean duration of IV therapy was 5.7 days, and the mean total duration of therapy was 9.6 days in both groups. The frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was similar between the two groups.

Exclusion of the most severe CAP and immunocompromised patients limits generalizability of these results.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as moxifloxacin in the treatment of selected patients with CAP.

Citation: Stets R et al. Omadacycline for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:517-27.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a leading cause of hospitalization and death, particularly in the elderly. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of CAP pathogens, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenzae, and atypical organisms, such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Legionella pneumophila, and Chlamydia pneumoniae.

Study design: Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, placebo-controlled trial.

Setting: Hospitalized patients (98.8%) in non-ICU settings at 86 sites in Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Synopsis: The trial recruited 774 adults with three or more CAP symptoms (cough, purulent sputum production, dyspnea, or pleuritic chest pain) and at least two abnormal vital signs, one or more clinical signs or laboratory findings associated with CAP, radiologically confirmed pneumonia, and a Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) of II, III, or IV (with higher class numbers indicating a greater risk of death). Exclusion criteria included having clinically significant liver or renal insufficiency or having an immunocompromised state. The patients were randomized to receive either omadacycline or moxifloxacin intravenously with the option to switch to the oral preparation of the respective drugs after at least 3 days of therapy. Atypical organisms were implicated in 67% of CAPS with known cause, while Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae were implicated in 20% and 12%, respectively. Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (81.1% vs 82.7%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (87.6% vs. 85.1%). Mean duration of IV therapy was 5.7 days, and the mean total duration of therapy was 9.6 days in both groups. The frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was similar between the two groups.

Exclusion of the most severe CAP and immunocompromised patients limits generalizability of these results.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as moxifloxacin in the treatment of selected patients with CAP.

Citation: Stets R et al. Omadacycline for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:517-27.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a leading cause of hospitalization and death, particularly in the elderly. Omadacycline is a new once-daily tetracycline with in vitro activity against a wide range of CAP pathogens, including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenzae, and atypical organisms, such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Legionella pneumophila, and Chlamydia pneumoniae.

Study design: Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, placebo-controlled trial.

Setting: Hospitalized patients (98.8%) in non-ICU settings at 86 sites in Europe, North America, South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Synopsis: The trial recruited 774 adults with three or more CAP symptoms (cough, purulent sputum production, dyspnea, or pleuritic chest pain) and at least two abnormal vital signs, one or more clinical signs or laboratory findings associated with CAP, radiologically confirmed pneumonia, and a Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) of II, III, or IV (with higher class numbers indicating a greater risk of death). Exclusion criteria included having clinically significant liver or renal insufficiency or having an immunocompromised state. The patients were randomized to receive either omadacycline or moxifloxacin intravenously with the option to switch to the oral preparation of the respective drugs after at least 3 days of therapy. Atypical organisms were implicated in 67% of CAPS with known cause, while Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae were implicated in 20% and 12%, respectively. Omadacycline was noninferior to moxifloxacin with respect to early clinical response (81.1% vs 82.7%, respectively) and posttreatment clinical response rates (87.6% vs. 85.1%). Mean duration of IV therapy was 5.7 days, and the mean total duration of therapy was 9.6 days in both groups. The frequency of adverse events (primarily gastrointestinal) was similar between the two groups.

Exclusion of the most severe CAP and immunocompromised patients limits generalizability of these results.

Bottom line: Omadacycline provides similar clinical benefit as moxifloxacin in the treatment of selected patients with CAP.

Citation: Stets R et al. Omadacycline for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. N Eng J Med. 2019;380:517-27.

Dr. Manian is a core educator faculty member in the department of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Background: The use of multimodal non-opioid analgesics is a common practice to minimize postoperative pain and opioid analgesic use. There is limited high-quality evidence to confirm the synergistic effect and safety of acetaminophen and ibuprofen in the peripostoperative setting. The Paracetamol and NSAID in combination (PANSAID) trial investigated the analgesic efficacy and safety of four multimodal analgesic regimens after total hip arthroplasty.

The median morphine consumption in the 24 hours after surgery was significantly lower with ­full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared with acetaminophen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 36 mg, 99.6% confidence interval, 6.5-24; P < .001), which exceeded the prespecified 10-mg threshold for a minimal clinically important difference (MCID). The difference between acetaminophen-ibuprofen and ibuprofen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 26 mg) did not exceed the MCID, and was not clinically meaningful. The ­differences in morphine consumption with full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared to half-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen (28 mg) and ibuprofen compared to acetaminophen monotherapy were not statistically significant.

Serious adverse events, the other primary outcome, within 90 days after surgery (15% in the ibuprofen group and 11% in the acetaminophen group, relative risk, 1.44; 97.5% CI, 0.79-2.64; P = .18) did not differ between acetaminophen monotherapy and ibuprofen monotherapy. Secondary outcomes included statistically significant analgesia (lower pain scores) at rest and with mobilization at 24 hours in the acetaminophen-ibuprofen group compared to the other groups.

An interesting observation was that acetaminophen-ibuprofen did not exceed the MCID compared to ibuprofen, which suggests that ibuprofen monotherapy may be a reasonable option for early postoperative analgesia.

Bottom line: Acetaminophen-ibuprofen reduced postoperative morphine use and had improved analgesia 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty, and was not associated with an increased 3-month risk of serious adverse events.

Citation: Thybo KH et al. Effect of combination of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen vs. either alone on patient-controlled morphine consumption in the first 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty. The PANSAID randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2019;321(6):562-71.

Dr. Lambert is a hospital medicine clinician and addiction medicine specialist in the division of hospital medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Background: The use of multimodal non-opioid analgesics is a common practice to minimize postoperative pain and opioid analgesic use. There is limited high-quality evidence to confirm the synergistic effect and safety of acetaminophen and ibuprofen in the peripostoperative setting. The Paracetamol and NSAID in combination (PANSAID) trial investigated the analgesic efficacy and safety of four multimodal analgesic regimens after total hip arthroplasty.

The median morphine consumption in the 24 hours after surgery was significantly lower with ­full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared with acetaminophen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 36 mg, 99.6% confidence interval, 6.5-24; P < .001), which exceeded the prespecified 10-mg threshold for a minimal clinically important difference (MCID). The difference between acetaminophen-ibuprofen and ibuprofen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 26 mg) did not exceed the MCID, and was not clinically meaningful. The ­differences in morphine consumption with full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared to half-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen (28 mg) and ibuprofen compared to acetaminophen monotherapy were not statistically significant.

Serious adverse events, the other primary outcome, within 90 days after surgery (15% in the ibuprofen group and 11% in the acetaminophen group, relative risk, 1.44; 97.5% CI, 0.79-2.64; P = .18) did not differ between acetaminophen monotherapy and ibuprofen monotherapy. Secondary outcomes included statistically significant analgesia (lower pain scores) at rest and with mobilization at 24 hours in the acetaminophen-ibuprofen group compared to the other groups.

An interesting observation was that acetaminophen-ibuprofen did not exceed the MCID compared to ibuprofen, which suggests that ibuprofen monotherapy may be a reasonable option for early postoperative analgesia.

Bottom line: Acetaminophen-ibuprofen reduced postoperative morphine use and had improved analgesia 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty, and was not associated with an increased 3-month risk of serious adverse events.

Citation: Thybo KH et al. Effect of combination of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen vs. either alone on patient-controlled morphine consumption in the first 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty. The PANSAID randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2019;321(6):562-71.

Dr. Lambert is a hospital medicine clinician and addiction medicine specialist in the division of hospital medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Background: The use of multimodal non-opioid analgesics is a common practice to minimize postoperative pain and opioid analgesic use. There is limited high-quality evidence to confirm the synergistic effect and safety of acetaminophen and ibuprofen in the peripostoperative setting. The Paracetamol and NSAID in combination (PANSAID) trial investigated the analgesic efficacy and safety of four multimodal analgesic regimens after total hip arthroplasty.

The median morphine consumption in the 24 hours after surgery was significantly lower with ­full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared with acetaminophen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 36 mg, 99.6% confidence interval, 6.5-24; P < .001), which exceeded the prespecified 10-mg threshold for a minimal clinically important difference (MCID). The difference between acetaminophen-ibuprofen and ibuprofen monotherapy (20 mg vs. 26 mg) did not exceed the MCID, and was not clinically meaningful. The ­differences in morphine consumption with full-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen compared to half-strength acetaminophen-ibuprofen (28 mg) and ibuprofen compared to acetaminophen monotherapy were not statistically significant.

Serious adverse events, the other primary outcome, within 90 days after surgery (15% in the ibuprofen group and 11% in the acetaminophen group, relative risk, 1.44; 97.5% CI, 0.79-2.64; P = .18) did not differ between acetaminophen monotherapy and ibuprofen monotherapy. Secondary outcomes included statistically significant analgesia (lower pain scores) at rest and with mobilization at 24 hours in the acetaminophen-ibuprofen group compared to the other groups.

An interesting observation was that acetaminophen-ibuprofen did not exceed the MCID compared to ibuprofen, which suggests that ibuprofen monotherapy may be a reasonable option for early postoperative analgesia.

Bottom line: Acetaminophen-ibuprofen reduced postoperative morphine use and had improved analgesia 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty, and was not associated with an increased 3-month risk of serious adverse events.

Citation: Thybo KH et al. Effect of combination of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen vs. either alone on patient-controlled morphine consumption in the first 24 hours after total hip arthroplasty. The PANSAID randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2019;321(6):562-71.

Dr. Lambert is a hospital medicine clinician and addiction medicine specialist in the division of hospital medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Employed physicians have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, or have even been terminated. In many cases, these actions violate their contract. How can they fight them?
 

Michael D., MD, a colorectal surgeon employed in a large surgical practice in Georgia, is still trying to make sense of a late-night directive from the practice, received in late March.

The practice had just started seeing a steep decline in appointments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a hastily arranged group phone call at 11:00 p.m., the CEO told the group what would have to be done.

They would be taking a 50% reduction in salaries, their bonuses for work already done were being withheld, and they would have to use their paid time off (PTO) in order to get their full March salary.

“It’s been over 2 weeks now, and still we’ve seen nothing formalized in writing,” said Dr. D., who asked that his name not be used because he was told that, under no circumstances, should anyone talk to the media.

“They have not told us anything more since then,” he said. “There’s just been a lot of hearsay and speculation.”

Dr. D. has been in touch with employed physicians at other practices, and their experiences run the gamut. One doctor at a large multispecialty group said his salary hadn’t been reduced at all, but a cardiologist was just told he will be laid off in 60 days.

Asking for big sacrifices

As the pandemic has intensified, employed physicians have started to see massive changes in their payment arrangements. They have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, and have even been terminated.

“In my 11 years of work on physician contracts, I have never seen changes as drastic as these,” said Kyle Claussen, a physician contract attorney and CEO of Resolve, a company that advises physicians on their careers. The company is based in Columbia, Mo.

He has heard from more than 100 doctors about these proposed changes in their contracts and related matters. Even graduating residents, he said, are being told that the start dates for their new jobs will be delayed.

In many cases, these actions violate the employed physicians’ contracts, said Ericka Adler, a physician contract attorney at Roetzel & Andress in Chicago.

“Some employers are acting out of desperation and are not making legally sound decisions,” Ms. Adler said. “It’s especially upsetting when they do not try to even talk to or work with the doctor first.”

Employers making unfounded unilateral changes

Ms. Adler said some employers are simply issuing a letter to all doctors. “It goes something like, ‘Just to let you know, we are cutting compensation effective immediately,’ and this may apply across the board to all doctors,” she said.

“But the problem with letters is that this is a contractual matter,” she said. “The employer needs to renegotiate each doctor’s contract.”

Employers might insist that the unilateral changes are based on terms in the contract, but this is usually unfounded, both lawyers said. A “force majeure” clause in contracts would allow the employer to set aside terms under certain specified emergencies, and the pandemic might be one of them. But Mr. Claussen said force majeure clauses are rare in physician contracts, and Ms. Adler said she has never seen one.

Lacking a force majeure clause, employers may try to turn to a common law doctrine that allows employers to set aside a contract when it is impossible to perform its terms, owing, for example, to “an unexpected intervening event.” But this tactic is also questionable, says Ms. Adler, who also represents the employer’s side of the contract. “This is a very high standard and unlikely to be satisfied,” she said.

Employers are desperate to amend contracts

Lacking a cause to take unilateral action, many employers are desperately trying to amend their physician contracts – the subject of the plaintive emails that employed physicians started receiving in mid-March.

“Doctors are trying to decide how they will react to these documents,” Mr. Claussen said. “If they don’t sign, they run the risk of being terminated.” He is expecting termination letters for some of these doctors to start coming in 2-3 weeks.

In response to these amendments, “doctors want to reach out to their employers and see if something can be negotiated,” he said. “Some employers have been amenable, but others have so far not been.”

Ms. Adler said the amendments typically offer open-ended arrangements favoring the employer. “The document might call for a temporary pay cut until the employer thinks they can restore the old salary, but it is up to the employer to decide when that would be,” she said.

Also, when the employer owes the physician for services already performed, the amendments don’t promise to pay them the full amount owed, she said.

Ms. Adler advises doctors to ask for a provision that restoration of their original salary will occur at a definite point in time, such as 30 days after the organization is back at previous volume. And if the doctor is owed money, the doctor should ask for full payment – and to sweeten that offer, allow the employer to pay the doctor back over a period, she says.

Just in the past month, employers have been pushing for several specific changes in doctors’ employment status. Here are some changes that Mr. Claussen and Ms. Adler have been seeing.
 

Withholding quarterly bonuses

In March, just before quarterly bonus payments were due, employed physicians started getting notices that they would not get the bonus, Mr. Claussen said. This covered work already done, and it amounted to a lot of money because practices were busy then.

“Not paying bonuses is a very big deal because they can make up to 50% of a physician’s total compensation,” Mr. Claussen said. He added that unilaterally withholding those funds, without a change in the contract, is legally questionable.

In addition to these changes on past bonuses, he said employers are now trying to temporarily end bonuses going forward through the contract amendments. “It’s not a good idea to sign this,” he said.
 

Doctors paid on pure production are left in the lurch

As volume falls, some hospitals and practices are shutting down doctors’ offices for all but emergencies, leaving their employed doctors with practically nothing to do. Doctors paid purely on their productivity are devastated by this change because their income virtually goes to zero, Mr. Claussen said.

He said office shutdowns are particularly common for specialists because hospitals have been stopping elective procedures during the pandemic, but they can also happen in primary care, which has seen steep declines in patient volume, too.

Having doctors on pure production means that employers can keep doctors hired without having to pay them, Mr. Claussen said. He has seen some employers try to shift more doctors into pure production through the amended contracts.

But Ms. Adler said having doctors on pure production is actually disadvantageous for employers in the current climate. The employer may end up being owed money because of advance payments they have already made to these doctors, she said.

In any case, both lawyers agreed that doctors on a pure production model are in an untenable situation right now. Ms. Adler said they are not earning money but are still technically at work, so they cannot collect unemployment compensation, which would give them some income.

Forcing doctors to use paid time off

To provide some pay for doctors who have no volume, many employers are forcing these doctors to use up their PTO days, which typically amount to about 4 weeks, Mr. Claussen said. “These doctors have no choice in the matter,” he said.

Furthermore, while on PTO, they are being required to take call. Employers are still obligated to cover call, and there may not be enough doctors still working to fill the call schedule. But making doctors do this work on their time off may be a violation of the contract, Mr. Claussen said.

Terminating physicians

Doctors who have little to do are often put on furlough. This means they don’t get paid but they keep their benefits, Ms. Adler said. The next step, she said, is to lay them off, with the stated intention of rehiring them.

Once laid off, she said, they can get unemployment payments. “Unemployment payments may not be anywhere near what they were earning before, but they are better than not earning anything,” Ms. Adler said.

In some cases, employers are just terminating them and are offering no prospect of rehiring them, she said. Ms. Adler said terminations can be a big problem for doctors. Physicians might have to repay a signing bonus or they might lose their malpractice coverage, forcing them to buy a tail. They could also be subject to a noncompete clause, which would not allow them to practice in the area, she said.

Terminating without cause typically requires 60-90 days’ notice, which both sides might use to negotiate some changes in the contract. But Ms. Adler said some employers are firing doctors with cause, and are using legally questionable reasons to do so.

“In most cases, these employers are grasping at straws,” she said. As a result, she expects many fired doctors will file wrongful termination lawsuits. She thinks employers are better advised to negotiate with the physicians.
 

Delaying start dates for new physicians

Typically, graduating residents and fellows signed with their new employers months ago and are ready to start working on July 1. But some employers are pushing back the start date for several months, Mr. Claussen said.

Mr. Claussen has been helping several clients in this situation. He said these delays are often a clear violation of the employment contract. Most contracts require an amendment to change the start date, he said.

Mr. Claussen said some employers have agreed to a new start date in an amended contract, giving the new physicians a solid date to work with. Not having work can be a real problem for graduating residents, who typically have to start paying off loans.

Now physicians won’t become a new partner

Mr. Claussen said physicians who are up for becoming partner are now being told that the deal is off. With less money coming in, existing partners are not willing to share it with a new partner, and there is no work for a new partner.

“The promise to make them partner is usually a verbal promise, so it is much less likely to be a breach of contract,” he said. “It is frustrating for physicians who were expecting to become partner.”

What can physicians do?

When employers present changes to them, physicians often feel their hands are tied, Ms. Adler said. In these dangerous times, they are expected to make sacrifices to keep the organization from going out of business.

Even if they wanted to file suits against their employer, “they can’t go to court right now because the courts are closed,” Ms. Adler said. “Employers are banking on doctors not doing anything.”

In most cases, however, doctors don’t have to act right away, she said. “Just because you have not reacted to the new situation does not mean you accepted it,” she said. “You can wait months, even years to file a lawsuit, depending on the state and the cause of action.”

Ms. Adler recommended that doctors make it clear that they don’t agree with the changes. An attorney experienced in physician contracts can review the changes being made and the amended contracts being offered.

Thanks to recent federal changes, employers have to have some ways to continue paying physicians, Ms. Adler said. Medical practices with fewer than 500 employees can get loans from the federal government that would not have to be repaid if they met certain stipulations, such as hiring back all the employees they terminate, she said.

Mr. Claussen said physicians should resist the obvious dangers, such as a shift to a pure production salary, denying bonus payments for work already done, and forcing physicians you use up PTO days.

He also suggested persuading employers to postpone rather than eliminate payments. “Some employers have agreed to postpone payments until a date later in 2020 rather than eliminate them,” he said. “The aim is that the organization will be back on its feet at that time.”

Mr. Claussen said he is trying to limit the contract amendments to 1 or 2 months. Because the situation caused by the pandemic is so fluid, “this allows for flexibility,” he said. “We can revisit the situation and come up with different changes.”

Ms. Adler doubts employers would accept short-term changes with a definite end date because such changes would not be in the employer’s interest. But Mr. Claussen said one employer has agreed to reevaluate its contracts in June.

Both lawyers agreed that many employers are trying to work with their physicians. “In 90% of the cases I have seen, both sides cooperate,” Ms. Adler said. “Because of the situation, people are being much more conciliatory than they would have been.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

Employed physicians have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, or have even been terminated. In many cases, these actions violate their contract. How can they fight them?
 

Michael D., MD, a colorectal surgeon employed in a large surgical practice in Georgia, is still trying to make sense of a late-night directive from the practice, received in late March.

The practice had just started seeing a steep decline in appointments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a hastily arranged group phone call at 11:00 p.m., the CEO told the group what would have to be done.

They would be taking a 50% reduction in salaries, their bonuses for work already done were being withheld, and they would have to use their paid time off (PTO) in order to get their full March salary.

“It’s been over 2 weeks now, and still we’ve seen nothing formalized in writing,” said Dr. D., who asked that his name not be used because he was told that, under no circumstances, should anyone talk to the media.

“They have not told us anything more since then,” he said. “There’s just been a lot of hearsay and speculation.”

Dr. D. has been in touch with employed physicians at other practices, and their experiences run the gamut. One doctor at a large multispecialty group said his salary hadn’t been reduced at all, but a cardiologist was just told he will be laid off in 60 days.

Asking for big sacrifices

As the pandemic has intensified, employed physicians have started to see massive changes in their payment arrangements. They have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, and have even been terminated.

“In my 11 years of work on physician contracts, I have never seen changes as drastic as these,” said Kyle Claussen, a physician contract attorney and CEO of Resolve, a company that advises physicians on their careers. The company is based in Columbia, Mo.

He has heard from more than 100 doctors about these proposed changes in their contracts and related matters. Even graduating residents, he said, are being told that the start dates for their new jobs will be delayed.

In many cases, these actions violate the employed physicians’ contracts, said Ericka Adler, a physician contract attorney at Roetzel & Andress in Chicago.

“Some employers are acting out of desperation and are not making legally sound decisions,” Ms. Adler said. “It’s especially upsetting when they do not try to even talk to or work with the doctor first.”

Employers making unfounded unilateral changes

Ms. Adler said some employers are simply issuing a letter to all doctors. “It goes something like, ‘Just to let you know, we are cutting compensation effective immediately,’ and this may apply across the board to all doctors,” she said.

“But the problem with letters is that this is a contractual matter,” she said. “The employer needs to renegotiate each doctor’s contract.”

Employers might insist that the unilateral changes are based on terms in the contract, but this is usually unfounded, both lawyers said. A “force majeure” clause in contracts would allow the employer to set aside terms under certain specified emergencies, and the pandemic might be one of them. But Mr. Claussen said force majeure clauses are rare in physician contracts, and Ms. Adler said she has never seen one.

Lacking a force majeure clause, employers may try to turn to a common law doctrine that allows employers to set aside a contract when it is impossible to perform its terms, owing, for example, to “an unexpected intervening event.” But this tactic is also questionable, says Ms. Adler, who also represents the employer’s side of the contract. “This is a very high standard and unlikely to be satisfied,” she said.

Employers are desperate to amend contracts

Lacking a cause to take unilateral action, many employers are desperately trying to amend their physician contracts – the subject of the plaintive emails that employed physicians started receiving in mid-March.

“Doctors are trying to decide how they will react to these documents,” Mr. Claussen said. “If they don’t sign, they run the risk of being terminated.” He is expecting termination letters for some of these doctors to start coming in 2-3 weeks.

In response to these amendments, “doctors want to reach out to their employers and see if something can be negotiated,” he said. “Some employers have been amenable, but others have so far not been.”

Ms. Adler said the amendments typically offer open-ended arrangements favoring the employer. “The document might call for a temporary pay cut until the employer thinks they can restore the old salary, but it is up to the employer to decide when that would be,” she said.

Also, when the employer owes the physician for services already performed, the amendments don’t promise to pay them the full amount owed, she said.

Ms. Adler advises doctors to ask for a provision that restoration of their original salary will occur at a definite point in time, such as 30 days after the organization is back at previous volume. And if the doctor is owed money, the doctor should ask for full payment – and to sweeten that offer, allow the employer to pay the doctor back over a period, she says.

Just in the past month, employers have been pushing for several specific changes in doctors’ employment status. Here are some changes that Mr. Claussen and Ms. Adler have been seeing.
 

Withholding quarterly bonuses

In March, just before quarterly bonus payments were due, employed physicians started getting notices that they would not get the bonus, Mr. Claussen said. This covered work already done, and it amounted to a lot of money because practices were busy then.

“Not paying bonuses is a very big deal because they can make up to 50% of a physician’s total compensation,” Mr. Claussen said. He added that unilaterally withholding those funds, without a change in the contract, is legally questionable.

In addition to these changes on past bonuses, he said employers are now trying to temporarily end bonuses going forward through the contract amendments. “It’s not a good idea to sign this,” he said.
 

Doctors paid on pure production are left in the lurch

As volume falls, some hospitals and practices are shutting down doctors’ offices for all but emergencies, leaving their employed doctors with practically nothing to do. Doctors paid purely on their productivity are devastated by this change because their income virtually goes to zero, Mr. Claussen said.

He said office shutdowns are particularly common for specialists because hospitals have been stopping elective procedures during the pandemic, but they can also happen in primary care, which has seen steep declines in patient volume, too.

Having doctors on pure production means that employers can keep doctors hired without having to pay them, Mr. Claussen said. He has seen some employers try to shift more doctors into pure production through the amended contracts.

But Ms. Adler said having doctors on pure production is actually disadvantageous for employers in the current climate. The employer may end up being owed money because of advance payments they have already made to these doctors, she said.

In any case, both lawyers agreed that doctors on a pure production model are in an untenable situation right now. Ms. Adler said they are not earning money but are still technically at work, so they cannot collect unemployment compensation, which would give them some income.

Forcing doctors to use paid time off

To provide some pay for doctors who have no volume, many employers are forcing these doctors to use up their PTO days, which typically amount to about 4 weeks, Mr. Claussen said. “These doctors have no choice in the matter,” he said.

Furthermore, while on PTO, they are being required to take call. Employers are still obligated to cover call, and there may not be enough doctors still working to fill the call schedule. But making doctors do this work on their time off may be a violation of the contract, Mr. Claussen said.

Terminating physicians

Doctors who have little to do are often put on furlough. This means they don’t get paid but they keep their benefits, Ms. Adler said. The next step, she said, is to lay them off, with the stated intention of rehiring them.

Once laid off, she said, they can get unemployment payments. “Unemployment payments may not be anywhere near what they were earning before, but they are better than not earning anything,” Ms. Adler said.

In some cases, employers are just terminating them and are offering no prospect of rehiring them, she said. Ms. Adler said terminations can be a big problem for doctors. Physicians might have to repay a signing bonus or they might lose their malpractice coverage, forcing them to buy a tail. They could also be subject to a noncompete clause, which would not allow them to practice in the area, she said.

Terminating without cause typically requires 60-90 days’ notice, which both sides might use to negotiate some changes in the contract. But Ms. Adler said some employers are firing doctors with cause, and are using legally questionable reasons to do so.

“In most cases, these employers are grasping at straws,” she said. As a result, she expects many fired doctors will file wrongful termination lawsuits. She thinks employers are better advised to negotiate with the physicians.
 

Delaying start dates for new physicians

Typically, graduating residents and fellows signed with their new employers months ago and are ready to start working on July 1. But some employers are pushing back the start date for several months, Mr. Claussen said.

Mr. Claussen has been helping several clients in this situation. He said these delays are often a clear violation of the employment contract. Most contracts require an amendment to change the start date, he said.

Mr. Claussen said some employers have agreed to a new start date in an amended contract, giving the new physicians a solid date to work with. Not having work can be a real problem for graduating residents, who typically have to start paying off loans.

Now physicians won’t become a new partner

Mr. Claussen said physicians who are up for becoming partner are now being told that the deal is off. With less money coming in, existing partners are not willing to share it with a new partner, and there is no work for a new partner.

“The promise to make them partner is usually a verbal promise, so it is much less likely to be a breach of contract,” he said. “It is frustrating for physicians who were expecting to become partner.”

What can physicians do?

When employers present changes to them, physicians often feel their hands are tied, Ms. Adler said. In these dangerous times, they are expected to make sacrifices to keep the organization from going out of business.

Even if they wanted to file suits against their employer, “they can’t go to court right now because the courts are closed,” Ms. Adler said. “Employers are banking on doctors not doing anything.”

In most cases, however, doctors don’t have to act right away, she said. “Just because you have not reacted to the new situation does not mean you accepted it,” she said. “You can wait months, even years to file a lawsuit, depending on the state and the cause of action.”

Ms. Adler recommended that doctors make it clear that they don’t agree with the changes. An attorney experienced in physician contracts can review the changes being made and the amended contracts being offered.

Thanks to recent federal changes, employers have to have some ways to continue paying physicians, Ms. Adler said. Medical practices with fewer than 500 employees can get loans from the federal government that would not have to be repaid if they met certain stipulations, such as hiring back all the employees they terminate, she said.

Mr. Claussen said physicians should resist the obvious dangers, such as a shift to a pure production salary, denying bonus payments for work already done, and forcing physicians you use up PTO days.

He also suggested persuading employers to postpone rather than eliminate payments. “Some employers have agreed to postpone payments until a date later in 2020 rather than eliminate them,” he said. “The aim is that the organization will be back on its feet at that time.”

Mr. Claussen said he is trying to limit the contract amendments to 1 or 2 months. Because the situation caused by the pandemic is so fluid, “this allows for flexibility,” he said. “We can revisit the situation and come up with different changes.”

Ms. Adler doubts employers would accept short-term changes with a definite end date because such changes would not be in the employer’s interest. But Mr. Claussen said one employer has agreed to reevaluate its contracts in June.

Both lawyers agreed that many employers are trying to work with their physicians. “In 90% of the cases I have seen, both sides cooperate,” Ms. Adler said. “Because of the situation, people are being much more conciliatory than they would have been.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

Employed physicians have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, or have even been terminated. In many cases, these actions violate their contract. How can they fight them?
 

Michael D., MD, a colorectal surgeon employed in a large surgical practice in Georgia, is still trying to make sense of a late-night directive from the practice, received in late March.

The practice had just started seeing a steep decline in appointments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a hastily arranged group phone call at 11:00 p.m., the CEO told the group what would have to be done.

They would be taking a 50% reduction in salaries, their bonuses for work already done were being withheld, and they would have to use their paid time off (PTO) in order to get their full March salary.

“It’s been over 2 weeks now, and still we’ve seen nothing formalized in writing,” said Dr. D., who asked that his name not be used because he was told that, under no circumstances, should anyone talk to the media.

“They have not told us anything more since then,” he said. “There’s just been a lot of hearsay and speculation.”

Dr. D. has been in touch with employed physicians at other practices, and their experiences run the gamut. One doctor at a large multispecialty group said his salary hadn’t been reduced at all, but a cardiologist was just told he will be laid off in 60 days.

Asking for big sacrifices

As the pandemic has intensified, employed physicians have started to see massive changes in their payment arrangements. They have had to take large pay cuts, give up bonuses, go on leave, and have even been terminated.

“In my 11 years of work on physician contracts, I have never seen changes as drastic as these,” said Kyle Claussen, a physician contract attorney and CEO of Resolve, a company that advises physicians on their careers. The company is based in Columbia, Mo.

He has heard from more than 100 doctors about these proposed changes in their contracts and related matters. Even graduating residents, he said, are being told that the start dates for their new jobs will be delayed.

In many cases, these actions violate the employed physicians’ contracts, said Ericka Adler, a physician contract attorney at Roetzel & Andress in Chicago.

“Some employers are acting out of desperation and are not making legally sound decisions,” Ms. Adler said. “It’s especially upsetting when they do not try to even talk to or work with the doctor first.”

Employers making unfounded unilateral changes

Ms. Adler said some employers are simply issuing a letter to all doctors. “It goes something like, ‘Just to let you know, we are cutting compensation effective immediately,’ and this may apply across the board to all doctors,” she said.

“But the problem with letters is that this is a contractual matter,” she said. “The employer needs to renegotiate each doctor’s contract.”

Employers might insist that the unilateral changes are based on terms in the contract, but this is usually unfounded, both lawyers said. A “force majeure” clause in contracts would allow the employer to set aside terms under certain specified emergencies, and the pandemic might be one of them. But Mr. Claussen said force majeure clauses are rare in physician contracts, and Ms. Adler said she has never seen one.

Lacking a force majeure clause, employers may try to turn to a common law doctrine that allows employers to set aside a contract when it is impossible to perform its terms, owing, for example, to “an unexpected intervening event.” But this tactic is also questionable, says Ms. Adler, who also represents the employer’s side of the contract. “This is a very high standard and unlikely to be satisfied,” she said.

Employers are desperate to amend contracts

Lacking a cause to take unilateral action, many employers are desperately trying to amend their physician contracts – the subject of the plaintive emails that employed physicians started receiving in mid-March.

“Doctors are trying to decide how they will react to these documents,” Mr. Claussen said. “If they don’t sign, they run the risk of being terminated.” He is expecting termination letters for some of these doctors to start coming in 2-3 weeks.

In response to these amendments, “doctors want to reach out to their employers and see if something can be negotiated,” he said. “Some employers have been amenable, but others have so far not been.”

Ms. Adler said the amendments typically offer open-ended arrangements favoring the employer. “The document might call for a temporary pay cut until the employer thinks they can restore the old salary, but it is up to the employer to decide when that would be,” she said.

Also, when the employer owes the physician for services already performed, the amendments don’t promise to pay them the full amount owed, she said.

Ms. Adler advises doctors to ask for a provision that restoration of their original salary will occur at a definite point in time, such as 30 days after the organization is back at previous volume. And if the doctor is owed money, the doctor should ask for full payment – and to sweeten that offer, allow the employer to pay the doctor back over a period, she says.

Just in the past month, employers have been pushing for several specific changes in doctors’ employment status. Here are some changes that Mr. Claussen and Ms. Adler have been seeing.
 

Withholding quarterly bonuses

In March, just before quarterly bonus payments were due, employed physicians started getting notices that they would not get the bonus, Mr. Claussen said. This covered work already done, and it amounted to a lot of money because practices were busy then.

“Not paying bonuses is a very big deal because they can make up to 50% of a physician’s total compensation,” Mr. Claussen said. He added that unilaterally withholding those funds, without a change in the contract, is legally questionable.

In addition to these changes on past bonuses, he said employers are now trying to temporarily end bonuses going forward through the contract amendments. “It’s not a good idea to sign this,” he said.
 

Doctors paid on pure production are left in the lurch

As volume falls, some hospitals and practices are shutting down doctors’ offices for all but emergencies, leaving their employed doctors with practically nothing to do. Doctors paid purely on their productivity are devastated by this change because their income virtually goes to zero, Mr. Claussen said.

He said office shutdowns are particularly common for specialists because hospitals have been stopping elective procedures during the pandemic, but they can also happen in primary care, which has seen steep declines in patient volume, too.

Having doctors on pure production means that employers can keep doctors hired without having to pay them, Mr. Claussen said. He has seen some employers try to shift more doctors into pure production through the amended contracts.

But Ms. Adler said having doctors on pure production is actually disadvantageous for employers in the current climate. The employer may end up being owed money because of advance payments they have already made to these doctors, she said.

In any case, both lawyers agreed that doctors on a pure production model are in an untenable situation right now. Ms. Adler said they are not earning money but are still technically at work, so they cannot collect unemployment compensation, which would give them some income.

Forcing doctors to use paid time off

To provide some pay for doctors who have no volume, many employers are forcing these doctors to use up their PTO days, which typically amount to about 4 weeks, Mr. Claussen said. “These doctors have no choice in the matter,” he said.

Furthermore, while on PTO, they are being required to take call. Employers are still obligated to cover call, and there may not be enough doctors still working to fill the call schedule. But making doctors do this work on their time off may be a violation of the contract, Mr. Claussen said.

Terminating physicians

Doctors who have little to do are often put on furlough. This means they don’t get paid but they keep their benefits, Ms. Adler said. The next step, she said, is to lay them off, with the stated intention of rehiring them.

Once laid off, she said, they can get unemployment payments. “Unemployment payments may not be anywhere near what they were earning before, but they are better than not earning anything,” Ms. Adler said.

In some cases, employers are just terminating them and are offering no prospect of rehiring them, she said. Ms. Adler said terminations can be a big problem for doctors. Physicians might have to repay a signing bonus or they might lose their malpractice coverage, forcing them to buy a tail. They could also be subject to a noncompete clause, which would not allow them to practice in the area, she said.

Terminating without cause typically requires 60-90 days’ notice, which both sides might use to negotiate some changes in the contract. But Ms. Adler said some employers are firing doctors with cause, and are using legally questionable reasons to do so.

“In most cases, these employers are grasping at straws,” she said. As a result, she expects many fired doctors will file wrongful termination lawsuits. She thinks employers are better advised to negotiate with the physicians.
 

Delaying start dates for new physicians

Typically, graduating residents and fellows signed with their new employers months ago and are ready to start working on July 1. But some employers are pushing back the start date for several months, Mr. Claussen said.

Mr. Claussen has been helping several clients in this situation. He said these delays are often a clear violation of the employment contract. Most contracts require an amendment to change the start date, he said.

Mr. Claussen said some employers have agreed to a new start date in an amended contract, giving the new physicians a solid date to work with. Not having work can be a real problem for graduating residents, who typically have to start paying off loans.

Now physicians won’t become a new partner

Mr. Claussen said physicians who are up for becoming partner are now being told that the deal is off. With less money coming in, existing partners are not willing to share it with a new partner, and there is no work for a new partner.

“The promise to make them partner is usually a verbal promise, so it is much less likely to be a breach of contract,” he said. “It is frustrating for physicians who were expecting to become partner.”

What can physicians do?

When employers present changes to them, physicians often feel their hands are tied, Ms. Adler said. In these dangerous times, they are expected to make sacrifices to keep the organization from going out of business.

Even if they wanted to file suits against their employer, “they can’t go to court right now because the courts are closed,” Ms. Adler said. “Employers are banking on doctors not doing anything.”

In most cases, however, doctors don’t have to act right away, she said. “Just because you have not reacted to the new situation does not mean you accepted it,” she said. “You can wait months, even years to file a lawsuit, depending on the state and the cause of action.”

Ms. Adler recommended that doctors make it clear that they don’t agree with the changes. An attorney experienced in physician contracts can review the changes being made and the amended contracts being offered.

Thanks to recent federal changes, employers have to have some ways to continue paying physicians, Ms. Adler said. Medical practices with fewer than 500 employees can get loans from the federal government that would not have to be repaid if they met certain stipulations, such as hiring back all the employees they terminate, she said.

Mr. Claussen said physicians should resist the obvious dangers, such as a shift to a pure production salary, denying bonus payments for work already done, and forcing physicians you use up PTO days.

He also suggested persuading employers to postpone rather than eliminate payments. “Some employers have agreed to postpone payments until a date later in 2020 rather than eliminate them,” he said. “The aim is that the organization will be back on its feet at that time.”

Mr. Claussen said he is trying to limit the contract amendments to 1 or 2 months. Because the situation caused by the pandemic is so fluid, “this allows for flexibility,” he said. “We can revisit the situation and come up with different changes.”

Ms. Adler doubts employers would accept short-term changes with a definite end date because such changes would not be in the employer’s interest. But Mr. Claussen said one employer has agreed to reevaluate its contracts in June.

Both lawyers agreed that many employers are trying to work with their physicians. “In 90% of the cases I have seen, both sides cooperate,” Ms. Adler said. “Because of the situation, people are being much more conciliatory than they would have been.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The use of digital tools among physicians has markedly risen since 2016, with telehealth visits and remote patient monitoring making the greatest strides in usage, an American Medical Association report shows.

In 2019, 28% of physicians used televisits/virtual visits, up from 14% in 2016, while remote monitoring and management for improved care rose to 22% in 2019, an increase from 13% in 2016, according to the AMA report, released in February 2020. The report, which surveyed 1,359 doctors, includes responses from 672 primary care physicians and 687 specialists.

Remote monitoring for efficiency, meanwhile, grew to 16% in 2019 from 12% in 2016. Remote monitoring for efficiency pertains to smart versions of common clinical devices such as thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and scales that automatically enter readings in the record. Remote monitoring for improved care refers to mobile applications and devices used for daily measurement of vital signs such as weight, blood pressure, blood glucose.

Adoption of other digital tools by physicians have also grown, including clinical decision support, which climbed to 37% in 2019 from 28% in 2016 and patient engagement tools, which rose to 33% in 2019, up from 26% in 2016. Clinical decision support tools pertain to modules used in conjunction with the electronic health record (EHR), or mobile applications integrated with an EHR that can signify changes in patient data, such as weight gain/loss, or change in blood chemistry. Patient engagement tools, meanwhile, refer to solutions that promote patient wellness and active patient participation in their care.

Tools that encompass use of point of care/workflow enhancement increased to 47% in 2019, from 42% in 2016. This area includes communication and sharing of electronic clinical data to consult with specialists, make referrals and/or transitions of care. Tools that address consumer access to their clinical data, meanwhile, rose to 58% in 2019 from 53% in 2016, the highest adoption rate among the digital health tool categories.

Overall, more physicians see an advantage to digital health solutions than did 3 years ago. More primary care physicians and specialists in 2019 reported a “definite advantage” to digital tools enhancing care of patients than in 2016. Doctors who see no advantage to such tools are trending downward and are concentrated to those age 50 and older, according to the report.

Solo-practice physicians are slowly increasing their use of digital health tools. In 2016, solo physicians reported using an average of 1.5 digital tools, which in 2019 increased to an average of 2.2 digital tools. Small practices with between one and three doctors used an average of 1.4 tools in 2016, which rose to an average of 2.2 tools in 2019, the report found. PCPs used slightly more digital tools, compared with specialists, in both 2016 and 2019.

Female doctors are slightly ahead of their male counterparts when it comes to digital health tools. In 2019, female physicians used an average of 2.6 digital tools, up from 1.9 in 2016. Male doctors used an average of 2.4 tools in 2019, compared with 1.9 tools in 2016.

For the physicians surveyed, the most important factor associated with usage was that digital tools were covered by malpractice insurance, followed by the importance of data privacy/security ensured by the EHR vendor, and that the tools were well integrated with the EHR. Other important factors included that data security was ensured by the practice or hospital, that doctors were reimbursed for their time spent using digital tools, and that the tools were supported by the EHR vendor.

Regarding the top motivator for doctors to use digital tools, 51% of physicians in 2019 said improved efficiency was “very important,” up from 48% in 2016. Other top motivators included that digital tools increased safety, improved diagnostic ability, and addressed physician burnout.

In 2019, the demonstration of safety and efficacy in peer-reviewed publications as it relates to digital tools also grew in importance. Of the physicians surveyed, 36% reported that safety and efficacy demonstrated in peer-reviewed publications was “very important,” an increase from 32% in 2016. Other “very important” factors for physicians are that digital tools used are proven to be as good/superior to traditional care, that they are intuitive/require no special training, that they align with the standard of care, and that their safety and efficacy is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The rise of the digital-native physician will have a profound impact on health care and patient outcomes, and will place digital health technologies under pressure to perform according to higher expectations,” AMA board chair Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, PhD, said in a statement. “The AMA survey provides deep insight into the emerging requirements that physicians expect from digital technologies and sets an industry guidepost for understanding what a growing number of physicians require to adopt new technology.”

The survey was derived from the same physician panel used in 2016, provided by WebMD. For the 2019 survey, the basic 2016 survey was followed in wording and question order, with a few variations to remove some questions no longer relevant. The 2019 sample used careful quotas to ensure a sample composition similar to that of 2016, according to the report.

[email protected]

SOURCE: AMA Digital Health Research: Physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting digital health – Adoption and attitudinal shifts from 2016 to 2019. American Medical Association. February 2020.

The use of digital tools among physicians has markedly risen since 2016, with telehealth visits and remote patient monitoring making the greatest strides in usage, an American Medical Association report shows.

In 2019, 28% of physicians used televisits/virtual visits, up from 14% in 2016, while remote monitoring and management for improved care rose to 22% in 2019, an increase from 13% in 2016, according to the AMA report, released in February 2020. The report, which surveyed 1,359 doctors, includes responses from 672 primary care physicians and 687 specialists.

Remote monitoring for efficiency, meanwhile, grew to 16% in 2019 from 12% in 2016. Remote monitoring for efficiency pertains to smart versions of common clinical devices such as thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and scales that automatically enter readings in the record. Remote monitoring for improved care refers to mobile applications and devices used for daily measurement of vital signs such as weight, blood pressure, blood glucose.

Adoption of other digital tools by physicians have also grown, including clinical decision support, which climbed to 37% in 2019 from 28% in 2016 and patient engagement tools, which rose to 33% in 2019, up from 26% in 2016. Clinical decision support tools pertain to modules used in conjunction with the electronic health record (EHR), or mobile applications integrated with an EHR that can signify changes in patient data, such as weight gain/loss, or change in blood chemistry. Patient engagement tools, meanwhile, refer to solutions that promote patient wellness and active patient participation in their care.

Tools that encompass use of point of care/workflow enhancement increased to 47% in 2019, from 42% in 2016. This area includes communication and sharing of electronic clinical data to consult with specialists, make referrals and/or transitions of care. Tools that address consumer access to their clinical data, meanwhile, rose to 58% in 2019 from 53% in 2016, the highest adoption rate among the digital health tool categories.

Overall, more physicians see an advantage to digital health solutions than did 3 years ago. More primary care physicians and specialists in 2019 reported a “definite advantage” to digital tools enhancing care of patients than in 2016. Doctors who see no advantage to such tools are trending downward and are concentrated to those age 50 and older, according to the report.

Solo-practice physicians are slowly increasing their use of digital health tools. In 2016, solo physicians reported using an average of 1.5 digital tools, which in 2019 increased to an average of 2.2 digital tools. Small practices with between one and three doctors used an average of 1.4 tools in 2016, which rose to an average of 2.2 tools in 2019, the report found. PCPs used slightly more digital tools, compared with specialists, in both 2016 and 2019.

Female doctors are slightly ahead of their male counterparts when it comes to digital health tools. In 2019, female physicians used an average of 2.6 digital tools, up from 1.9 in 2016. Male doctors used an average of 2.4 tools in 2019, compared with 1.9 tools in 2016.

For the physicians surveyed, the most important factor associated with usage was that digital tools were covered by malpractice insurance, followed by the importance of data privacy/security ensured by the EHR vendor, and that the tools were well integrated with the EHR. Other important factors included that data security was ensured by the practice or hospital, that doctors were reimbursed for their time spent using digital tools, and that the tools were supported by the EHR vendor.

Regarding the top motivator for doctors to use digital tools, 51% of physicians in 2019 said improved efficiency was “very important,” up from 48% in 2016. Other top motivators included that digital tools increased safety, improved diagnostic ability, and addressed physician burnout.

In 2019, the demonstration of safety and efficacy in peer-reviewed publications as it relates to digital tools also grew in importance. Of the physicians surveyed, 36% reported that safety and efficacy demonstrated in peer-reviewed publications was “very important,” an increase from 32% in 2016. Other “very important” factors for physicians are that digital tools used are proven to be as good/superior to traditional care, that they are intuitive/require no special training, that they align with the standard of care, and that their safety and efficacy is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The rise of the digital-native physician will have a profound impact on health care and patient outcomes, and will place digital health technologies under pressure to perform according to higher expectations,” AMA board chair Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, PhD, said in a statement. “The AMA survey provides deep insight into the emerging requirements that physicians expect from digital technologies and sets an industry guidepost for understanding what a growing number of physicians require to adopt new technology.”

The survey was derived from the same physician panel used in 2016, provided by WebMD. For the 2019 survey, the basic 2016 survey was followed in wording and question order, with a few variations to remove some questions no longer relevant. The 2019 sample used careful quotas to ensure a sample composition similar to that of 2016, according to the report.

[email protected]

SOURCE: AMA Digital Health Research: Physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting digital health – Adoption and attitudinal shifts from 2016 to 2019. American Medical Association. February 2020.

The use of digital tools among physicians has markedly risen since 2016, with telehealth visits and remote patient monitoring making the greatest strides in usage, an American Medical Association report shows.

In 2019, 28% of physicians used televisits/virtual visits, up from 14% in 2016, while remote monitoring and management for improved care rose to 22% in 2019, an increase from 13% in 2016, according to the AMA report, released in February 2020. The report, which surveyed 1,359 doctors, includes responses from 672 primary care physicians and 687 specialists.

Remote monitoring for efficiency, meanwhile, grew to 16% in 2019 from 12% in 2016. Remote monitoring for efficiency pertains to smart versions of common clinical devices such as thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and scales that automatically enter readings in the record. Remote monitoring for improved care refers to mobile applications and devices used for daily measurement of vital signs such as weight, blood pressure, blood glucose.

Adoption of other digital tools by physicians have also grown, including clinical decision support, which climbed to 37% in 2019 from 28% in 2016 and patient engagement tools, which rose to 33% in 2019, up from 26% in 2016. Clinical decision support tools pertain to modules used in conjunction with the electronic health record (EHR), or mobile applications integrated with an EHR that can signify changes in patient data, such as weight gain/loss, or change in blood chemistry. Patient engagement tools, meanwhile, refer to solutions that promote patient wellness and active patient participation in their care.

Tools that encompass use of point of care/workflow enhancement increased to 47% in 2019, from 42% in 2016. This area includes communication and sharing of electronic clinical data to consult with specialists, make referrals and/or transitions of care. Tools that address consumer access to their clinical data, meanwhile, rose to 58% in 2019 from 53% in 2016, the highest adoption rate among the digital health tool categories.

Overall, more physicians see an advantage to digital health solutions than did 3 years ago. More primary care physicians and specialists in 2019 reported a “definite advantage” to digital tools enhancing care of patients than in 2016. Doctors who see no advantage to such tools are trending downward and are concentrated to those age 50 and older, according to the report.

Solo-practice physicians are slowly increasing their use of digital health tools. In 2016, solo physicians reported using an average of 1.5 digital tools, which in 2019 increased to an average of 2.2 digital tools. Small practices with between one and three doctors used an average of 1.4 tools in 2016, which rose to an average of 2.2 tools in 2019, the report found. PCPs used slightly more digital tools, compared with specialists, in both 2016 and 2019.

Female doctors are slightly ahead of their male counterparts when it comes to digital health tools. In 2019, female physicians used an average of 2.6 digital tools, up from 1.9 in 2016. Male doctors used an average of 2.4 tools in 2019, compared with 1.9 tools in 2016.

For the physicians surveyed, the most important factor associated with usage was that digital tools were covered by malpractice insurance, followed by the importance of data privacy/security ensured by the EHR vendor, and that the tools were well integrated with the EHR. Other important factors included that data security was ensured by the practice or hospital, that doctors were reimbursed for their time spent using digital tools, and that the tools were supported by the EHR vendor.

Regarding the top motivator for doctors to use digital tools, 51% of physicians in 2019 said improved efficiency was “very important,” up from 48% in 2016. Other top motivators included that digital tools increased safety, improved diagnostic ability, and addressed physician burnout.

In 2019, the demonstration of safety and efficacy in peer-reviewed publications as it relates to digital tools also grew in importance. Of the physicians surveyed, 36% reported that safety and efficacy demonstrated in peer-reviewed publications was “very important,” an increase from 32% in 2016. Other “very important” factors for physicians are that digital tools used are proven to be as good/superior to traditional care, that they are intuitive/require no special training, that they align with the standard of care, and that their safety and efficacy is validated by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The rise of the digital-native physician will have a profound impact on health care and patient outcomes, and will place digital health technologies under pressure to perform according to higher expectations,” AMA board chair Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, PhD, said in a statement. “The AMA survey provides deep insight into the emerging requirements that physicians expect from digital technologies and sets an industry guidepost for understanding what a growing number of physicians require to adopt new technology.”

The survey was derived from the same physician panel used in 2016, provided by WebMD. For the 2019 survey, the basic 2016 survey was followed in wording and question order, with a few variations to remove some questions no longer relevant. The 2019 sample used careful quotas to ensure a sample composition similar to that of 2016, according to the report.

[email protected]

SOURCE: AMA Digital Health Research: Physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting digital health – Adoption and attitudinal shifts from 2016 to 2019. American Medical Association. February 2020.