Press Release Date: March 5, 2021
In the first months of the pandemic, Black and Hispanic patients accounted for a larger share of COVID-19-related hospitalizations than White patients, according to a new data analysis from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). A second data analysis demonstrates how different vaccine distribution prioritization plans may lead to different levels of equity across income and race/ethnicity.
“AHRQ analysts continue to produce important insights into the pandemic and help healthcare policymakers make informed decisions,” said AHRQ Acting Director David Meyers, M.D. “AHRQ uses data to identify disparities and to discover options for promoting equity.”
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What if there was an easy way to shorten the window to full COVID-19 vaccination and herd immunity by as many as 100 days, and potentially save 150,000-to-200,000 lives?
There is: just let people get their COVID vaccines at their primary care doctors offices, suggests Jack Westfall, MD, MPH, director of the Robert Graham Center at the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). You don t sit out your best player in the big game, yet that s where primary care sits in terms of vaccine distribution, Westfall said last week at an online event on the state of primary care.
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The healthcare industry has six big challenges ahead in 2021: rightsizing after the telehealth explosion; adjusting to changing clinical trials; encouraging digital relationships that ease physician burdens; forecasting for an uncertain 2021; reshaping health portfolios for growth; and building a resilient and responsive supply chain for long-term health.
For this report, PwC’s Health Research Institute surveyed 2,511 American consumers, 128 health plan executives, 153 healthcare provider organization executives, and 124 pharmaceutical and life sciences executives in August and September 2020. HRI also interviewed numerous thought leaders from throughout the industry and frontline clinicians to understand their on-the-ground experiences during a historic year.
“While in 2020 many healthcare organizations saw their financial plans obliterated, patient behaviors radically shift and virtual care explode, in 2021 they will work to put the system back together,” said PwC
In this brief and the accompanying Health System Dashboard, we look across over a hundred data points to assess the performance of the health system in the United States. This year, the coronavirus pandemic has upended lives and economies and fundamentally challenged health systems across the globe. At the time of this publication, the U.S. leads in the total number of cases and deaths due to COVID-19 and has a higher per capita death rate than many similarly wealthy countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations with above median gross domestic product (GDP) and median GDP per capita).