Telehealth use in cystic fibrosis during COVID-19: Association with race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors.

BACKGROUND: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an uptake of telehealth in cystic fibrosis care. Previous studies show disparities in telehealth use based on socioeconomic status (SES). We aimed to: (1) understand telehealth use and perceptions and (2) identify the facilitators and barriers to telehealth use among people with CF and their families (PwCF) from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. METHODS: We conducted an analysis of the 2020 Cystic Fibrosis State of Care surveys completed by PwCF (PFSoC), CF Care Programs (SoC1) and the CF Foundation Patient Registry (CFFPR). RESULTS: A total of 424 PwCF and 286 programs responded to the PFSoC and SoC1. Among PwCF, 90% self-identified as White, 6% as Hispanic/Latino, and 2% as Black. Racial/ethnic minorities were less likely to have had a telehealth visit (p=.015). This difference was pronounced among the Hispanic/Latino population (p<.01). Telehealth use did not differ by health insurance and was similarly offered independent of financial status. Compared to PwCF who denied financial constraints, those who reported financial difficulties found telehealth more difficult to use (p=.018) and were less likely to think that their concerns (p=.010) or issues that mattered most to them (p=.020) were addressed during telehealth. Programs perceived lack of technology, language barriers, and home conditions as barriers to telehealth in vulnerable populations. CONCLUSION: PFSoC and SoC1 identified differences in telehealth use and care perceptions by ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic characteristics. Further studies are needed to understand how telehealth can change access to CF care in diverse subpopulations.

Acute Care Reimagined: Home Hospital Care Can Support the Triple Aim and Reduce Health Disparities.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Home hospital care (HHC) is a new and exciting concept that holds the promise of achieving all three components of the Triple Aim and reducing health disparities. As an innovative care delivery model, HHC substitutes traditional inpatient hospital care with hospital care at home for older patients with certain conditions. Studies have shown evidence of reduced cost of care, improved patient satisfaction, and enhanced quality and safety of care for patients treated through this model. The steady growth in Medicare Advantage enrollment and the expansion in 2020 of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospitals Without Walls program to include acute hospital care at home creates an opportunity for hospitals to implement such programs and be financially rewarded for reducing costs. Capacity constraints exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that now is the ideal time for healthcare leaders to test and advance the concept of HHC in their communities.

What Has Covid-19 Exposed in Bioethics? Four Myths.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed four myths in bioethics. First, the flood of bioethics publications on how to allocate scarce resources in crisis conditions has assumed authorities would declare the onset of crisis standards of care, yet few have done so. This leaves guidelines in limbo and patients unprotected. Second, the pandemic's realities have exploded traditional boundaries between clinical, research, and public health ethics, requiring bioethics to face the interdigitation of learning, doing, and allocating. Third, without empirical research, the success or failure of ethics guidelines remains unknown, demonstrating that crafting ethics guidance is only the start. And fourth, the pandemic's glaring health inequities require new commitment to learn from communities facing extraordinary challenges. Without that new learning, bioethics methods cannot succeed. The pandemic is a wake-up call, and bioethics must rise to the challenge.

Inequities in Hypertension Control in the United States Exposed and Exacerbated by COVID-19 and the Role of Home Blood Pressure and Virtual Health Care During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, having killed more than 514 000 US adults as of March 2, 2021. COVID-19 mitigation strategies have unintended consequences on managing chronic conditions such as hypertension, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and health disparities in the United States. During the first wave of the pandemic in the United States, the combination of observed racial/ethnic inequities in COVID-19 deaths and social unrest reinvigorated a national conversation about systemic racism in health care and society. The 4th Annual University of Utah Translational Hypertension Symposium gathered frontline clinicians, researchers, and leaders from diverse backgrounds to discuss the intersection of these 2 critical social and public health phenomena and to highlight preexisting disparities in hypertension treatment and control exacerbated by COVID-19. The discussion underscored environmental and socioeconomic factors that are deeply embedded in US health care and research that impact inequities in hypertension. Structural racism plays a central role at both the health system and individual levels. At the same time, virtual healthcare platforms are being accelerated into widespread use by COVID-19, which may widen the divide in healthcare access across levels of wealth, geography, and education. Blood pressure control rates are declining, especially among communities of color and those without health insurance or access to health care. Hypertension awareness, therapeutic lifestyle changes, and evidence-based pharmacotherapy are essential. There is a need to improve the implementation of community-based interventions and blood pressure self-monitoring, which can help build patient trust and increase healthcare engagement.

COVID-19 and Health Disparities: Structural Evil Unmasked.

Background: Incidence and mortality from COVID-19 are starkly elevated in poor, minority and marginalized communities. These differences reflect longstanding disparities in income, housing, air quality, preexisting health status, legal protections, and access to health care. The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences have made these ancient disparities plainly visible. Methodology: As scholars in Catholic research universities committed to advancing both scientific knowledge and social justice, we examined these disparities through the lenses of both epidemiology and ethics. Findings: We see these widening disparities as not only as threats to human health, societal stability, and planetary health, but also as moral wrongs - outward manifestations of unrecognized privilege and greed. They are the concrete consequences of policies that promote structural violence and institutionalize racism. Recommendations: We encourage governments to take the following three scientific and ethical justified actions to reduce disparities, prevent future pandemics, and advance the common good: (1) Invest in public health systems; (2) Reduce economic inequities by making health care affordable to all; providing education, including early education, to all children; strengthening environmental and occupational safeguards; and creating more just tax structures; and (3) Preserve our Common Home, the small blue planet on which we all live.

Racial differences in management and outcomes of acute myocardial infarction during COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: There are concerns that healthcare and outcomes of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities are disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated admission rates, treatment and mortality of BAME with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) during COVID-19. METHODS: Using multisource national healthcare records, patients hospitalised with AMI in England during 1 February-27 May 2020 were included in the COVID-19 group, whereas patients admitted during the same period in the previous three consecutive years were included in a pre-COVID-19 group. Multilevel hierarchical regression analyses were used to quantify the changes in-hospital and 7-day mortality in BAME compared with whites. RESULTS: Of 73 746 patients, higher proportions of BAME patients (16.7% vs 10.1%) were hospitalised with AMI during the COVID-19 period compared with pre-COVID-19. BAME patients admitted during the COVID-19 period were younger, male and likely to present with ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction. COVID-19 BAME group admitted with non-ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction less frequently received coronary angiography (86.1% vs 90.0%, p<0.001) and had a longer median delay to reperfusion (4.1 hours vs 3.7 hours, p<0.001) compared with whites. BAME had higher in-hospital (OR 1.68, 95% CI 1.27 to 2.28) and 7-day mortality (OR 1.81 95% CI 1.31 to 2.19) during COVID-19 compared with pre-COVID-19 period. CONCLUSION: In this multisource linked cohort study, compared with whites, BAME patients had proportionally higher hospitalisation rates with AMI, less frequently received guidelines indicated care and had higher early mortality during COVID-19 period compared with pre-COVID-19 period. There is a need to develop clinical pathways to achieve equity in the management of these vulnerable populations.

Social determinants of mortality from COVID-19: A simulation study using NHANES.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States is widespread, with more than 200,000 deaths reported as of September 23, 2020. While ecological studies show higher burdens of COVID-19 mortality in areas with higher rates of poverty, little is known about social determinants of COVID-19 mortality at the individual level. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We estimated the proportions of COVID-19 deaths by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and comorbid conditions using their reported univariate proportions among COVID-19 deaths and correlations among these variables in the general population from the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We used these proportions to randomly sample individuals from NHANES. We analyzed the distributions of COVID-19 deaths by race/ethnicity, income, education level, and veteran status. We analyzed the association of these characteristics with mortality by logistic regression. Summary demographics of deaths include mean age 71.6 years, 45.9% female, and 45.1% non-Hispanic white. We found that disproportionate deaths occurred among individuals with nonwhite race/ethnicity (54.8% of deaths, 95% CI 49.0%-59.6%, p < 0.001), individuals with income below the median (67.5%, 95% CI 63.4%-71.5%, p < 0.001), individuals with less than a high school level of education (25.6%, 95% CI 23.4% -27.9%, p < 0.001), and veterans (19.5%, 95% CI 15.8%-23.4%, p < 0.001). Except for veteran status, these characteristics are significantly associated with COVID-19 mortality in multiple logistic regression. Limitations include the lack of institutionalized people in the sample (e.g., nursing home residents and incarcerated persons), the need to use comorbidity data collected from outside the US, and the assumption of the same correlations among variables for the noninstitutionalized population and COVID-19 decedents. CONCLUSIONS: Substantial inequalities in COVID-19 mortality are likely, with disproportionate burdens falling on those who are of racial/ethnic minorities, are poor, have less education, and are veterans. Healthcare systems must ensure adequate access to these groups. Public health measures should specifically reach these groups, and data on social determinants should be systematically collected from people with COVID-19.