Medical Journal November 2020 Digital Edition
November 17, 20201 min
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COVID is challenging our mental health
November 17, 20206 min
BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor Recently, I participated in the Texas Academy of Family Practice annual virtual conference and saw a presentation on COVID and mental health. It was given by Katherine Buck, Ph.D., and Dr. Grant Fowler, from John Peter Smith Hospital. I will share part of...
Release those records: OCR initiative targets non-responsive providers
November 17, 20208 min
By Beth Anne Jackson and Allison Shelton, Brown & Fortunato, P.C. Since the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its first enforcement action under the Right of Access Initiative in September 2019, nine providers have settled allegations that they failed to provide patients with copies of their medical records in a timely manner. Seven of those settlements have been announced since September 2020, indicating that the COVID pandemic will not stop OCR’s enforcement efforts....
Social determinants of health can weigh on finances in value-based models
November 17, 20206 min
BY Ketan Patel, Advisory Principal, Healthcare, KPMG Can a produce store and better schools in a poor neighborhood reshape the trajectory of healthcare? Social determinants of health are one of the biggest buzzwords in healthcare. It’s a buzzword with real-life consequences, however, pertaining to how poverty, housing, education, pollution, and neighborhood characteristics can affect health. Health disparities between the richest and poorest ZIP codes in the city can mean a 10-year difference in average...
How employers can assist healthcare workers facing COVID-related stress, mental health and substance abuse challenges
November 17, 202012 min
By A. Kevin Troutman, Partner, Fisher Phillips While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc and uncertainty around the world, an extraordinary group of people has remained steadfast and reliable. That group of course is healthcare workers. Anyone who has been a patient in an intensive care unit has faced any frightening health predicament or has been with a loved one during a health crisis understands this: No hero stands taller than a healthcare...
Promote open enrollment despite ACA uncertainty
November 17, 20205 min
By Ted Shaw, President/CEO, Texas Hospital Association Texas is leading the case that landed the Affordable Care Act in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The state argues that the ACA is unconstitutional because the U.S. Congress eliminated the penalty for not complying with the individual mandate—the part of the law that requires people to maintain a minimum level of health insurance. For a state with the most uninsured residents in the nation...
SPOTlight supercharges cell studies
November 17, 20208 min
Researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new method to isolate specific cells, and in the process found a more robust fluorescent protein. Both the platform and the protein could be highly useful to synthetic biologists and biomedical researchers. They often need to single out cells with specific visual phenotypes like shape or activity determined by their genetic or epigenetic makeup or their developmental history. Rice graduate student Jihwan (James) Lee and François...
Study shows spike mutation D614G alters SARS-CoV-2 fitness
November 17, 20206 min
A multidisciplinary team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has shown a dominant mutation D614G of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein enhances viral replication in the upper respiratory airway, which may contribute to the increased transmission of COVID-19. This finding is important in understanding the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 as well as in the development of vaccines and therapeutic antibodies. “After the emergence of COVID-19, a mutation of D614G appeared in viral spike protein, the molecule that...
Large-scale cancer proteomics study profiles protein changes in response to drug treatments
November 17, 20205 min
Through large-scale profiling of protein changes in response to drug treatments in cancer cell lines, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have generated a valuable resource to aid in predicting drug sensitivity, to understand therapeutic resistance mechanisms, and to identify optimal combination treatment strategies. Their findings include expression changes in more than 200 clinically relevant proteins across more than 300 cell lines after treatment with 168 different compounds, making it the...