ACOs over the bar yet on the ropes | COVID’s traveling and ‘rationing’ clinicians | Patient experience vs. COVID economics

Some 501 accountable care organizations and other provider entities are urging Congressional leadership of both parties to modify the “unrealistic threshold tests” set out in the 2021 edition of the bipartisan Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015.

Hospitals that have failed to impress patients with COVID safety and quality measures should not be surprised when 2 of 3 patients switch provider orgs—or when 1 in 4 postpone a scheduled procedure indefinitely.

As is so often the case with COVID-19, the numbers sketch out a dauntingly vast landscape while the anecdotes paint portraits of affected human denizens.

With emergency-use applications for two COVID vaccines in the FDA’s hands, the public square is buzzing over who should get inoculated first.

Early on in the COVID crisis, many hospital-based healthcare workers moved around to serve in COVID hotspots hurting for staff. They did so at scale and at will. Those were the good old days.

In some areas the business downturns may rival the low points of March and April, when the pandemic pummeled the healthcare economy.

Both outcomes and costs may vary widely from one patient to the next even in hospitals with consistently strong quality scores. Machine learning can help optimize the selection process for each patient as an individual.

Researchers have demonstrated a machine learning model that can rule out COVID-19 in many emergency patients—and all the algorithm needs is data from routine ER blood tests.

The Society for Pediatric Radiology is expressing significant concerns around a new payment policy, believing it could lead to patient harm and climbing costs.