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The Eon Essential Patient Curve Executive Report

April 13, 2020

CANCER Doesn’t Care about COVID Educational Campaign
#CancerWontWait 

 

ALERT: Hospitals, Patients and the Economy can suffer long-term consequences from delayed or neglected care due to COVID. We need to consider how to meet Essential (vulnerable) Patient needs during the Spring 2020 outbreak.

 

SITUATION SUMMARY

CANCER doesn’t care about COVID. And, COVID doesn’t care about CANCER. To ensure patient and organizational survival, hospitals must juggle resources and tend to both COVID and CANCER this Spring 2020. We must rapidly adopt technology to support identification, management and care of the patient population at risk of irreparable harm during this time when caregivers and administration are stretched beyond normal emotional, mental and physical capacity.

COVID-19 has completely disrupted US hospital and healthcare system workflow and focus.  Unfortunately, this means, at many facilities, COVID-19 is paralyzing the identification, management and care of Essential Patients. The current loss of focus on Essential Patient Care is resulting in patient distress, risk of long-term suffering, loss of life, and poor outcomes as well as a loss of hospital income. This delayed care may be captured post-COVID, but return to normal hospital operations will not occur until the resulting bolus of delayed care, concurrent with normal care needs, subsides. Unless addressed soon, this avalanche of acute care needs with no or limited prioritization of non-emergent care will have long-term effects on our population, hospitals and economy as COVID and CANCER catastrophically intersect this summer.

We must quickly embrace technology to prioritize, manage and ensure care is provided for vulnerable patient populations at risk of irreparable harm (Essential Patients).

1. Patients: High-risk patients will go undiagnosed or untreated, and suffer poor outcomes as a result. An estimated 1.8 million people were expected to be diagnosed with cancer in the US this year before COVID halted identification and diverted treatment resources.*
2. Hospitals: Like the stock market, significant financial losses will result from decreased hospital outpatient and cancer care revenue. Delayed care will also increase the risk of liability in the future. Hospitals are already seeing a loss in revenue of up to 40% in month one of COVID.*

3. Employment Loss: Private sector employees have been furloughed, laid-off or had contracts terminated this spring, resulting in a record-breaking number of unemployment applications in March 2020. A secondary effect will be to eventually decrease the number of privately insured patients and payment models will shift to more government-based plans, resulting in further operating losses for hospitals. This economic downward spiral can directly impact caregiver’s employment as hospital systems make difficult choices and further the recessionary cycle.

COVID PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Delaying Essential Patient care now will cause a 2020 “Lost Summer” that will extend the effects of the Spring 2020 COVID pandemic. Since COVID is projected to spike again in the fall, this cycle of delayed care, economic stress, and poor outcomes will continue for many quarters after a vaccine is publicly available.

LOOKING AHEAD- THE ESSENTIAL PATIENT CURVE

Looking at the normal day-to-day US procedures, there’s another curve heading our way that we must flatten. This is the Essential and NonEssential Patient Care Curve. We need to triage the most at risk patients that need to be seen and can be seen.  Click here for Interactive Graph with more detail.

 

Hospitals cannot stop Essential Patient Care. Essential Patients must be seen safely. We must work to avoid the stall or postponing including:

  • Disrupted service lines, such as thoracic oncology, which will lead to later detection of lung cancer or further metastasis of this deadly disease.
  • Necessary imaging and procedures across the country.
  • Required interval CT surveillance for lung cancer and possible lung cancer patients.
  • Centralized management of these patients while doctors are being pulled from their service line to help in the ICU and on other medical floors.
  • Care coordination of vulnerable patient populations.

HOW WE CAN WORK TO OVERCOME THE LOST SUMMER

In response to COVID and in defense of Essential Patients, we can integrate technology to address the Essential Patient Curve. Eon is donating free and fast mission-critical solutions that support:

1) Essential Patient Identification
2) Streamline data submission to the NHSN for COVID-19 needs

Eon Essential Patient SafetyNet assists healthcare facilities with the identification of patients who need immediate care. It also offers the first mobile tumor board, allowing quarantined or reallocated service-line members the ability to communicate and make immediate critical patient decisions at any time.

Eon Essential Patient SafetyNet:

  • Identifies patients who need immediate care
  • Guarantees frictionless compliance to government mandates
  • Includes the first mobile tumor board, allowing quarantined or reallocated service line members the ability to make critical patients decisions at any time
  • Uses machine learning (ML) to provide actionable insights for predictive capacity

Also included is Eon SafetyNet COVIDTracker, which was created to assist in data transmission requested by the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) and their COVID-19 Module. It can easily be downloaded via the Apple or Google app stores.

Eon can provide rapid implementation of SafetyNet for Essential Patient identification within 7 days to hospitals and imaging centers across the US. There are more than 4,000 medical organizations who will benefit from Essential Patient SafetyNet. We will be there to help.

For more information please contact tracy.coleman@eonhealth.com.

*sources upon request

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