Today’s NewsStand — March 19, 2020

Today’s NewsStand — March 19, 2020

By Iowa Hospital Association|
|March 18, 2020

Featuring hospital and health care headlines from the media and the web.

Iowa news

University of Iowa Hospitals patient who had COVID-19 now discharged

The person who was the first in the state to be admitted to a hospital while suffering community spread of COVID-19 has been released from the facility, according to officials. The unnamed individual in Johnson County was discharged Tuesday, March 17, according to officials with the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. (KCRG-TV)

Lessons for Iowa from the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918

As we race to understand and deal with the COVID-19, it’s interesting and sobering to remember that we had a flu virus crisis in Iowa once before. The 1918 flu, known as the Spanish influenza, killed as many as 50 million people worldwide between 1918-1919. (The Gazette)

Working harder in anxious times, mental health providers getting paid less for safer service

Jill Lehmann-Bauer counsels veterans, teachers, government employees and others who have a mix of mental health issues ranging from post-traumatic stress to anxiety to major depression. Typically, the therapist sees clients in her Clive office at Central Iowa Therapy Solutions. But some have COPD and other chronic lung disorders that make them more susceptible to coronavirus infection, so this week she began doing psychotherapy online to help lessen the spread of COVID-19. (Des Moines Register)

 

National news

There aren’t enough ventilators to cope with the coronavirus

As the United States braces for an onslaught of coronavirus cases, hospitals and governments are confronting a grim reality: There are not nearly enough lifesaving ventilator machines to go around, and there is no way to solve the problem before the disease reaches full throttle. (The New York Times)

The new coronavirus can last on surfaces for up to three days, study says

The coronavirus driving the current pandemic can live on plastic and stainless steel surfaces for up to three days, researchers say in a study published as a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine. And it can linger in aerosols — the suspension of tiny particles or droplets in the air — for three hours, the study says.

CMS final rule poses big hurdles for payers

Payers and health plans will face challenging deadlines for achieving information exchange under the recently released final rules on interoperability and information blocking. An organization representing health plans contends that timelines for meeting requirements under the rules will be difficult to achieve, suggesting that the standards needed to achieve data exchange are immature and not proven to support the scale of interoperability that will be needed. (Healthcare IT News)

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