Tag: Kim Bellard

THCB Gang, Episode 11

May 28, 2020

Episode 11 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, May 27th and you can see it again below

Joining me were three regulars, patient safety expert Michael Millenson (MLMillenson), writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), and two new guests: digital health investment banker Steven Wardell (@StevenWardell) and MD turned physician leadership coach Maggi Cary (@MargaretCaryMD)! The conversation was heavy on telemedicine and value based care, and their impact on the stock-market, the economy and the health care system–all in a week when we went over 100,000 deaths from COVID-19.

If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Matthew Holt

The 2020 COVID Election

May 27, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

Many believe that the 2020 Presidential election will be a referendum on how President Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Some believe that is why the President is pushing so hard to reopen the economy, so that he can reclaim it as the focal point instead. I fear that the pandemic will, indeed, play a major role in the election, but not quite in the way we’re openly talking about.

It’s about there being fewer Democrats.

Now, let me say right from the start that I am not a conspiracy believer. I don’t believe that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab, or that China deliberately wanted it to spread. I don’t even believe that the Administration’s various delays and bungles in dealing with the pandemic are strategic or even deliberate.

I do believe, though, that people in the Administration and in the Republican party more generally may be seeing how the pandemic is playing out, and feel less incentive to combat it to the fullest extent of their powers. Let’s start with who is dying, where.

Home, Sweet Work

May 20, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

If you’re lucky, you’ve been working from home these past couple months. That is, you’re lucky you’re not one of the 30+ million people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. That is, you’re lucky you’re not an essential worker whose job has required you to risk exposure to COVID-19 by continuing to go into your workplace.

What’s interesting is that many of the stay-at-home workers, and the companies they work for, are finding it a surprisingly suitable arrangement. And that has potentially major implications for our society, and, not coincidentally, for our healthcare system.

Twitter was one of the first to announce that it wouldn’t care if workers continued to work from home. “Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs,” a company spokesperson wrote in a blog post. “So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”

Other tech companies are also letting the work-from-home experiment continue. According to The Washington Post, Amazon and Microsoft have told such workers they can keep working from home until at least October, while Facebook and Google say at least until 2021. Microsoft president Brad Smith observed: “We found that we can sustain productivity to a very high degree with people working from home.”

Keep Petri Dishes in the Lab

May 12, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

COVID-19 is changing the landscape of our healthcare system, and, indeed, of our entire society, in ways that we hadn’t been prepared for and with implications that we won’t fully grasp for some time. As we grapple with how to reshape our healthcare system and our society in the wake of the pandemic, though, I worry we’re going to focus on the wrong problems.

Take, for example, nursing homes, prisons, and the meatpacking industry.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the pandemic will recognize that each of these have been “hot spots,” and have been called “petri dishes” for coronavirus (as are cruise ships, but that’s a different article). These institutions aren’t the only places where masses of people congregate, but they seem to do so in ways that create fertile territories for COVID-19. And that’s the problem.

We knew early on that nursing homes were going to be a problem. We knew COVID-19 was a problem in Wuhan, but that was far away — until a few cases emerged in late February in a skilled nursing home in King County, Washington. We know now that these were not the first cases, nor the first deaths, but we were stunned by how quickly it spread in that facility. By mid-March experts were already calling nursing homes “ground zero,” and that has been proven right.

It is now estimated that as many as a third of all U.S. coronavirus deaths have come from nursing home residents or workers. That is (as of this writing) almost 30,000 deaths, and over 150,000 cases.

THCB Gang: Episode 8 LIVE 1PM PT/4PM ET, 5/7

May 7, 2020

Episode 8 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, May 7th at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! You can see it below.

Joining me were our regulars: patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), data privacy lawyer Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy), policy expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), radiologist Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad) (who snuck in late), and writer Kim Bellard (@Kimbbellard). We had a great conversation including a lot of detail around access to patient records, and some fun about infectious disease epidemiologists behaving badly! If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels from Friday— Matthew Holt

Healthcare Starts to Zoom Along

May 6, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

A year ago, if you’d used or even heard about Zoom, you were probably in the tech industry. Today, if you haven’t used Zoom, your friends or colleagues must not like you very much. COVID-19 has made most of us homebound most of the time, and video services like Zoom are helping make that more bearable.

And, thankfully, healthcare is finally paying attention.

Zoom was founded in 2011, poking along under the radar for several years, overshadowed by competitors like Skype or WebEx. For the entire month of May 2013 it only had a million meeting participants. Even by December 2019 it could boast “only” 10 million daily users.

Then — boom — COVID-19 hits and people start staying at home. Daily users skyrocketed to 200 million in March and as many as 300 million in April (well, not quite). Daily downloads went from 56,000 in January 2020 to over 2 million in April. Zoom is now used by businesses and families alike, drawn by its simplicity and ease of use.

By all rights, we should be using WebEx for business video calls and Skype for personal ones. Both had been around longer, offered credible services, and still exist. But both were acquired along the way, WebEx by Cisco, and Skype ultimately by Microsoft. As with its acquisition of Nokia, once acquired Microsoft didn’t quite seem to know what to do with it. Each left openings that Zoom plunged through when the pandemic hit.

Hiding Our Heads in the Sand

Apr 28, 2020

By KIM BELLARD

There are so many stories about the coronavirus pandemic — some inspiring, some tragic, and all-too-many frustrating. In the world’s supposedly most advanced economy, we’ve struggled to produce enough ventilators, tests, even swabs, for heaven’s sake.

I can’t stop thinking about infrastructure, especially unemployment systems.

We’d never purposely shut down our economy; no nation had. Each state is trying to figure out the best course between limiting exposure to COVID-19 and keeping food on people’s tables. Those workers deemed “essential” still show up for work, others may be able to work from home, but many have suddenly become unemployed.

The U.S. is seeing unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, and occuring in a matter of a couple months, not several years. As of this writing, there are over 22 million unemployed; no one believes that is a complete count (not everyone qualifies for unemployment), and few believe that will be the peak.

Many unemployment systems could not manage the flood of applications.

THCB Gang: Episode 6, LIVE 1PM PT/4PM ET, 4/23

Apr 22, 2020

Episode 6 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, April 23 at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! 4-6 semi-regular guests drawn from THCB authors and other assorted old friends of mine will shoot the sh*t about health care business, politics, practice, and tech. It’s available below and is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Our lineup included: Saurabh Jha (@roguerad), Ian Morrison (@seccurve), Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano),Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), Brian Klepper (@bklepper1), and a special guest – Alexandra Drane (@adrane, founder of Eliza, Queen of the Unmentionables, CEO of ArchAngels and sometimes Walmart cashier). Lots of great conversation especially around palliative care, patient experience, the real prevalence of COVID-19 and much more.

And if you want to contact Alex about caregiving, here is her Youtube Channel or please email her. — Matthew Holt

Wait — Robots Work But I Get Paid

Apr 17, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

We’re not through the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re probably not even near the end of the beginning yet. That hasn’t stopped many pundits to start speculating about how our society (and our healthcare system) are likely to be permanently changed as a result, such as continued reliance on telecommuting and telemedicine.

OK, I’ll play too: I believe we need to greatly expand the role of robots, and begin something that resembles Universal Basic Income (UBI). They’re not the only changes that may result, but they are two that should.

Robots

We’ve been seeing robots infiltrating the workforce for many decades, such as in manufacturing but also in many other industries.

Still, though, as our economy pares down to “essential businesses” during the pandemic, I’ve been alarmed at how many of the jobs remain done by humans. Not just healthcare workers on the front lines but also all those people doing the cleaning for essential businesses, all those people in the supply chain of food and other vital materials, all those people making deliveries, all those first responders, all those people all those people keeping the power on, the water running, and the internet streaming, among others. And so on.

The THCB Gang: Episode 5

Apr 15, 2020

Episode 5 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed Thursday, April 16 at 1pm PT- 4pm ET! 4-6 semi-regular guests drawn from THCB authors and other assorted old friends of mine will shoot the sh*t about health care business, politics, practice, and tech. It tries to be fun but serious and informative! If you miss it, it will also be preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Deven McGraw (@healthprivacy), Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), Grace Cordovano (@gracecordovano), Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson), and Dave deBronkhart (@ePatientDave) all discussed the recent news surrounding COVID-19, and their guesses on how it will impact the landscape of health care; from policy to practice — Matthew Holt