Virtual medicine’s next frontier | Philly Health Insider
And ED doctors at local hospitals didn’t get paid last week
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/ZATZYY7KWZFO5DH6QCNG33OYBQ.jpg)
Good morning. This week, we ask: Is it better to check out on a screen? Some patients seem to like Jefferson Health’s new virtual checkouts, but not all are on board.
Plus:
Oops, our bad: Physician staffing company ran out of cash to pay ED doctors at three local hospitals
Pink slips: The region’s largest health insurer laid off more than 100 employees
Knock, knock: New city initiative aims to boost postpartum health in Philly
📮 Got tips, questions, or suggestions? For a chance to be featured in this newsletter, email us back.
If someone forwarded you this newsletter, sign up here.
— Alison McCook, Inquirer health reporter, @alisonmccook.
A big question for health care in the 21st century is: How best to work virtual tools into medicine?
Here’s something Jefferson Health is trying: Our region’s largest nonprofit health system recently added virtual checkout at the new Honickman Center in Center City. Instead of the tedium of lining up at the office’s front desk at the end of an appointment, patients press a button on an LCD screen in their exam room, beaming up an assistant who helps them schedule follow-ups. (The screens even let patients play music, do breathing exercises, or pipe in a remote family member to the appointment.)
Jefferson isn’t the only one testing out new technology: Penn Medicine uses virtual monitors in its ICU to observe and assist with complex surgeries, while Lehigh Valley Health Network (recently acquired by Jefferson) also uses a virtual discharge process for surgical patients.
But, as Inquirer health journalist Sarah Gantz reports, things don’t always go smoothly: Earlier this year, Jefferson Abington Hospital was cited by the Pennsylvania Department of Health because virtual sitters meant to monitor behavioral health rooms instead posed a risk. The concern: patients could harm themselves using the eight-foot-long extension cord plugging in the machine to the wall.
Read Sarah’s story to get a firsthand account of the new virtual checkout system at the Honickman Center, and learn why patients are giving it mixed reviews.
The latest news to pay attention to
There were no paychecks last week for ED doctors at Lower Bucks, Roxborough Memorial, and Suburban Community Hospitals (along with 30 other hospitals nationwide) due to a cash crunch at NES Health, a California-based physician staffing company. All three local hospitals are owned by Prime Healthcare Services Inc., whose spokesperson did not respond to a question from reporter Harold Brubaker asking how many doctors were affected. This isn’t the first time ED doctors at these hospitals have had to work without pay. Harold has the backstory on the most recent lost paychecks.
IBX has laid off 3% of its workforce, totaling roughly 130 people, after the insurer reported a 32.5% drop in profits last year. A document distributed companywide by IBX leadership, obtained by The Inquirer, announced organizational changes that included the departure of eight leaders.
All Philly residents who deliver babies at Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital can now participate in the Family Connects program, which pays for nurses to visit new families at home up to three times to connect them with resources such as mental health support and food assistance.
This week’s number: $49.1 million
That’s the amount generic drugmakers Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc. (based in East Brunswick, N.J.) and Apotex Corp. have agreed to pay as part of a price-fixing agreement with 50 states and territories. Read on to find details about each company’s share of the settlement, and how consumers in Pa. and N.J. can determine if they are eligible for refunds.
Between January and September, state inspectors visited Grand View Hospital in Bucks County four times, often to investigate complaints, but found no problems. Click here to read the details we could gather.
Philly’s street opioids supply has been overtaken by “tranq dope” — the combo of fentanyl and xylazine. And the withdrawal symptoms are unbearable: unyielding pain, vomiting so forceful it perforates the esophagus, endless panic attack, and nerve sensitivity that makes every touch agony. It is so bad that patients leave the ED before completing their care, just to stop the torture.
For two years, Kory London, associate professor of emergency medicine at Jefferson Health, has been experimenting with new approaches to treat tranq dope withdrawal. Read more to learn how his team was able to reduce the odds patients would leave the hospital before treatment was complete by more than half.
Making moves
The University of Pennsylvania has a new executive vice dean for the Perelman School of Medicine and senior vice president of academic affairs for the University of Pennsylvania Health System: Lisa M. Bellini.
Bellini has worked at Penn for more than 25 years. She was the internal medicine program director and associate dean for graduate medical education, and now serves as the director of graduate medical education programs for the Penn-VinUni Alliance in Vietnam, which has created accredited residency programs in internal medicine, pediatrics, and surgery.
Rutgers University’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Science has received a big federal grant — $47.5 million — to create pathways to help scientific discoveries improve people’s lives.
“What we do is find the best process to bring a discovery in any disease to a patient and then change the behavior of providers in the health systems,” Reynold Panettieri Jr., a physician who serves as the vice chancellor for translational medicine and science at Rutgers, told reporter Aubrey Whelan.
Read Aubrey’s story to find out more details of the multimillion dollar initiative, including which public health challenges Rutgers plans to focus on.
📮How do you think we should use scientific discoveries to transform people’s lives? For a chance to be featured in this newsletter, email us back.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.