How COVID-19 Has Re-Shaped Health Care Delivery So Far
COVID-19 is re-shaping health care in America across many dimensions. In Shifts in Healthcare Demand, Delivery and Care During the COVID-19 Era, IQVIA presents a multi-faceted profile of the early impacts of the pandemic on U.S. health care. In the report, published in April 2020, IQVIA mined the company’s many data bases that track real-time data, including medical claims, flu data, sales data, oncology medical and pharmacy claims, formularies, among other sources. Top-line, IQVIA spotted the following key shifts in U.S. health care since the start of the coronavirus pandemic: Patients’ use of health services Impacts on medicine use, influenced
Seeking Comfort and Safety for Being Well: Consumers Turn to Virtual Health Modes
“We’re not getting back to business as usual any time soon,” Sage Growth Partners and Blackbook Research introduce their latest report on the COVID-19 pandemic, As the Country Reopens Safety Concerns Rise. One of the areas that won’t be getting “back to business” soon will be patients’ visits to doctors’ offices, hospitals, and urgent care centers, the report notes, based on a survey conducted among 591 U.S. consumers on April 28 and 29, 2020. Millions of U.S. health consumers’ feel unsafe, an increase among those who feel that way compared with SGP/Blackbook’s study from last month, a concern that ratcheted
How COVID-19 Is Driving More Deaths of Despair
In the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, we all feel like we are living in desperate times. If you are a person at-risk of dying a Death of Despair, you’re even more at-risk of doing so in the wake of the Coronavirus in America. Demonstrating this sad fact of U.S. life, the Well Being Trust and Robert Graham Center published Projected Deaths of Despair from COVID-19. The analysis quantifies the impact of isolation and loneliness combined with the dramatic economic downturn and mass unemployment with the worsening of mental illness and income inequity on the epidemic of Deaths of
Food In-Security in a Coronavirus America
One in 10 people in the U.S. were defined as food-insecure without consistent access to nutritious food options in 2019. The COVID pandemic has quickly and negatively impacted food insecurity in America, detailed in an assessment from NIHCM on the current state of food insecurity in America. As many as 4 in 10 U.S. households reported being food-insecure as of April 2020. That includes 20% of children living in the U.S. lacking nutritious food on a daily basis. The NIHCM adopted the definition of food insecurity from the USDA Adult Food Security Survey which is a 10-question poll asking people
TransUnion Reveals the Home Economics and Social Determinants of COVID-19
Today, 7th May 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that about 3.17 million jobs were lost in the nation in the last week. This calculated to an unemployment rate of 15.5%, an increase of 3.1% points from the previous week. Total jobs lost in the COVID-19 pandemic, starting from the utterance of the “P” word, has been ___ in the I.S. The virus’s global impact has led to what IMF called the Great Lockdown, resulting in economic inertia and contraction since Asia and Europe reported the first patients diagnosed with the coronavirus. The economic impact the world
Consumers Focus on Basic Needs in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Is Self-Care a New Normal?
Personal health, food and medicine, safety and financial security are consumers’ top priorities as of April 2020, learned in consumer research analyzed in How COVID-19 will permanently change consumer behavior from Accenture. Both health and economic concerns plague consumers around the world as people “strive to adapt to a new normal,” Accenture reports. “Fear is running high as individuals contemplate what this crisis means for them…for their families and friends, and the society at large,” the report sets the table on the evolving behaviors of consumers in the pandemic. On an individual, personal level, two-thirds of people are fearful for
Drive-Thru Health, In and After the Pandemic
Physical distancing and sheltering-in-place at home are becoming norms in our pandemic life-flows. We’ve seen the advent of drive-through and drive-up weddings, wakes, and high school graduation rites. And when food, hygiene supplies, and medical care can’t be delivered by Amazon or Instacart via FedEx, UPS, or the U.S. Postal Service, there’s always the automobile — which, in the U.S., is also part of COVID-19 consumers’ coping mechanisms for hunting-and-gathering the stuff of survival. The automobile has played a particularly unique role in American consumer culture, especially in the suburbanization of the country after World War II. THINK: American Graffiti
Food, Housing, Energy and Medical Care – the Material Hardships of COVID-19 in America
The Coronavirus has impacted every aspect of human life: first, the direct biological impact of COVID-19 on people, as of today the cause of over 63,000 deaths in the U.S. along with unquantifiable morbidity among millions of Americans who are surviving the virus and the toll on family caregivers. Beyond the direct physical impact of the virus, social and emotional health impacts are emerging now due to physical distancing, mandates to #StayHome, and telecommuting to jobs when possible. Mental health impacts will persist as a pandemic after the Coronavirus pandemic, I’ve previously detailed here in Health Populi. On a global
COVID-19’s Consumer Health Care Behaviors: Telehealth, Trauma, and Trust, via PwC
In a matter of several weeks, people living in the U.S. have endured massive personal social, emotional, physical and fiscal disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. State mandates to shelter at home, the adoption of wearing face masks and covers in public, and re-making dining tables and dens into home-working spaces for kids in school or parents telecommuting, American homes have morphed into petri dishes of people undergoing dramatic changes in a very short time. A new report from PwC looks at peoples’ changes in health behaviors in the first two months of the pandemic, asking whether these changes will
“Everyday Life” Factors Into Our Health Risks for COVID-19, Welltok Explains
Everyday factors can make a big difference in a person’s current and future health risks and needs, we’re learning in the COVID-19 pandemic, detailed in a new Welltok research report, Social Determinants of Health Matter: Voice of the Consumer. “The current public health crisis underscores the importance of leveraging SDOH as a way to effectively provide timely, relevant support that is truly going to make a difference for people’s total wellbeing,” Bob Fabbio, Welltok’s CEO, explained in a press release. “It’s not only about predicting high-risk individuals, but also those that may be feeling isolated, financially insecure or emotionally unstable that
How COVID-19 is Hurting Americans’ Home Economics in 2020
Beyond the physical and clinical aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are financial hits that people are taking in the shutdown of large parts of the U.S. economy, impacting jobs, wages, and health insurance rolls. Some 1 in 2 people in the U.S. who have had their income impacted by the coronavirus have either fallen behind in paying off credit card debt or other bills, had problems paying for utilities, have lagged in paying for housing (rent or mortgage), been challenged paying for food, or other out-of-pocket costs. We learn about these fiscal hits from COVID-10 from the latest Health Tracking Poll
COVID-19 Reveals Urgent Need for Universal Mental Health Care
The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically disrupted every aspect of life for everyday people, ratcheting up stress across all families: The mandate to #StayHome, being physically distanced from work colleagues, beloved family and friends, and our community touchpoints The fear and risk-management of contracting the COVID-19 virus, for ourselves and our families The economic shock or either losing our jobs, seeing our savings eroding from 401(k) plans, losing our health insurance, or all of the above If we’ve kept our jobs in the pandemic, the novel work environment at-home — with children afoot, some of whom are now forced to be
Health, Wealth & COVID-19 – My Conversation with Jeanne Pinder & Carium, in Charts
The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically impacting and re-shaping our health and wealth, simultaneously. Today, I’ll be brainstorming this convergence in a “collaborative health conversation” hosted by Carium’s Health IRL series. Here’s a link to the event. Jeanne founded ClearHealthCosts nearly ten years ago, having worked as a journalist with the New York Times and other media. She began to build a network of other journalists, each a node in a network to crowdsource readers’-patients’ medical bills in local markets. Jeanne started in the NYC metro and expanded, one node at a time and through many sources of funding from not-for-profits/foundations,
Healthy Thinking: Inside the Mind of the COVID-19 Consumer
Stress is up, smoking increasing, drinking more alcohol….Americans are tapping into a variety of coping mechanisms in the coronavirus outbreak, with health on their collective minds. Toluna and Harris Interactive are collaborating on the COVID-19 Barometer, publishing biweekly data on consumers’ views on the coronavirus pandemic. The data here are a snapshot of consumers taken through the Toluna-Harris poll conducted among 1,047 U.S. adults between 9-20 April 2020. The first chart shows various life-flows Americans have adopted in April, all risk factors impacting peoples’ overall health status and mental well-being. There were demographic differences across these factors: more women felt
The Patient-as-Payor in the Coronavirus Pandemic
One in three working age people in the U.S. lost their job as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of whom lost health insurance and others anxious their health coverage will be threatened, revealed in a survey from The Commonwealth Fund published on April 21, 2020. 2 in 5 people in America who are dealing with job insecurity are also health insurance insecure, the study found, as shown in the pie chart. The Commonwealth Fund commissioned the poll among 1,001 U.S. adults 18 to 64 years of age between 8-13 April 2020. Nearly all Americans believe the dots of
In the U.S., the Spread of Infectious Disease Now Seen As Bigger Threat Than Terrorism – Pew
The spread of infectious disease is the new terrorism in the eyes of Americans. The most significant major threat to the U.S. is infectious disease, four in five Americans said in March 2020, closely followed by terrorism (in general), the spread of nuclear weapons, and cyberattacks from other countries. For the study, the Pew Research Center commissioned a telephone survey conducted among 1,000 U.S. adults in March 2020. Large majorities of people are also highly concerned about China’s growing power and influence, global climate change, Russia’s power and influence, the condition of the global economy, and global poverty. The percent
Americans’ Sense of Well-Being Falls to Great Recession Levels, Gallup Finds
It’s déjà vu all over again for Americans’ well-being: we haven’t felt this low since the advent of the Great Recession that hit our well-well-being hard in December 2008. As COVID-19 diagnoses reached 200,000 in the U.S. in April 2020, Gallup gauged that barely 1 in 2 people felt they were thriving. In the past 12 years, the percent of Americans feeling they were thriving hit a peak in 2018, as the life evaluations line graph illustrates. Gallup polled over 20,000 U.S. adults in late March into early April 2020 to explore Americans’ self-evaluations of their well-being. FYI, Gallup asks consumers
The Epidemic After the Pandemic is Stress and Anxiety in America – Learning From Ginger
“U.S. workers were stressed before COVID-19; now, stress levels are through the roof,” based on data analyzed by Ginger, the digital behavioral health innovator, asserting this major mental health headline in its latest press release. Working Americans were becoming increasingly stressed, distressed, and anxious in February 2020, when Ginger fielded this study. Key data points from their analysis of U.S. workers’ feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic included: 7 in 10 working people said this was the most stressful time of their working lives 7 in 10 workers believed fellow employees in their companies were significantly less productive due to stress
The Unsurprising Surprise of Social Determinants in COVID-19 Mortality
“Covid-19 exposes America’s racial health gap,” asserts The Economist, the weekly news magazine based in London, UK, in an advanced essay dated 11 April 2020. The subtitle of the piece: “African-Americans appear more vulnerable to the virus.” The phrase, “your ZIP code is more important than your genetic code” has become the common mantra for public health people communicating the concept of the social determinants of health: those factors outside of medical services that shape peoples’ overall health and well-being. Two days ago, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published data that showed African-Americans were dying from complications of the
The Grocery Store as Social, Health — and Sickness — Destination
On Monday, 6th April 2020, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, has determined that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are essential workers in our age of the coronavirus pandemic. The PM has posted an Easter egg coloring project on her Facebook page to support children (and people like me who like to color) in the #StayHome era. In the U.S., the day before on Sunday 7th April, Dr. Deborah Birx advised Americans that, “The next two weeks are extraordinarily important. This is the moment to not be going to the grocery store, not going to the
The Coronavirus Impact on American Life, Part 2 – Our Mental Health
As the coronavirus pandemic’s curve of infected Americans ratchets up in the U.S., people are seeking comfort from listening to Dolly Parton’s bedtime stories, crushing on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s science-wrapped-with-empathy, and streaming the Tiger King on Netflix. These and other self-care tactics are taking hold in the U.S. as most people are “social distancing” or sheltering in place, based on numbers from the early April 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll on the impact of the coronavirus on American life. While the collective practice of #StayHome to #FlattenTheCurve is the best-practice advice from the science leaders at CDC, the NIAID
The Coronavirus Impact on American Life, Part 1 – Life Disrupted, and Money Concerns
Nearly 3 in 4 Americans see their lives disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the early April Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll. This feeling holds true across most demographic factors: among both parents and people without children; men and women alike; white folks as well as people of color (although fewer people identifying as Hispanic, still a majority). There are partisan differences, however, in terms of who perceives a life-disruption due to COVID-19: 76% of Democrats believe this, 72% of Independents, and 70% of Republicans. Interestingly, only 30% of Republicans felt this way in March 2020, more than
How the Coronavirus is Reshaping Consumer Trust – The Edelman Trust Barometer Lens and Health Impacts
U.S. consumers were re-shapen by the 2008 Recession in two key ways: people took on more self-service DIY daily life-flows, seeking self-sufficiency and less dependence on institutions; and, consumers became more value-sensitive both in terms of financial value and personal values. As Americans confront the clinical and fiscal realities of the coronavirus in the U.S., the trust people feel with organizations, brands and information sources is shifting, a special report from Edelman explains. In Brand Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic, Edelman focuses its trust lens on the pandemic and consumers’ shaken confidence in business and government institutions. These findings have
How the Coronavirus and Technology Are Reshaping Home-Work, -Life and -Health
As people conform to the #StayHome lifestyle to #FlattenTheCurve of the coronavirus pandemic, technology is transforming peoples’ home lives for working, playing, and socializing. The Consumer Technology Association has conducted the COVID-19 Impact Study assessing the use of technology at home, exploring U.S. households’ changing behaviors for consuming content, stocking the pantry, engaging with social media, and using online health and fitness tools. This research surveyed 1,004 U.S. adults 18 and over in March 2020 — early in the U.S. pandemic’s national “curve.” U.S. consumers’ top five technology purchases in mid-March 2020 were for smartphones, laptop computers, TVs, and headphones/earbuds.
Honor Your Doctor – It’s National Doctors Day Today (and EveryDay)
Today, March 30, is National Doctors Day. We honor doctors annually on this day. But every day, we must honor physicians for bolstering the health and wellness of our fellow Americans, our beloved families and friends, and our selves. The Coronavirus Pandemic reminds us of the precious and scarce resource that is our national supply of physicians in America — numbering about 750,000 active clinicians in the U.S. according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, physicians in America had been feeling increasingly burned out and depressed. The 2020 WebMD survey on the state of
West Virginia Was the Last State to ID a COVID-19 Positive Patient; The States’ Residents Are At Highest Risk for Severe Reaction to C19
Gallup has estimated 11 Million in U.S. at Severe Risk If Infected With COVID-19 in research published today. And the health citizens of West Virginia would be at greatest risk for having a severe reaction to the coronavirus. A “severe reaction” here means being critically ill or dying. The forecast doesn’t focus on the whole number of people in the US. who would be at-risk of contracting the coronavirus; the 11 million is the total number of Americans who have a “very high chance of becoming critically ill or dying” if 100% of the country were infected with C19. This
Wistful Thinking: The National Health Spending Forecast In a Land Without COVID-19
U.S. health care spending will grow to 20% of the national economy by 2028, forecasted in projections pre-published in the April 2020 issue of Health Affairs, National Health Expenditure (NHE) Projections. 2019-28: Expected Rebound in Prices Drives Rising Spending Growth. NHE will grow 5.4% in the decade, the model expects. But…what a difference a pandemic could make on this forecast. This year, NHE will be $3.8 trillion, growing to $6.2 trillion in 2028. Hospital care spending, the largest single component in national health spending, is estimated at $1.3 trillion in 2020. These projections are based on “current law,” the team
Steps Count: More Steps Are Self-Care Goodness in the COVID-19 Lifestyle
There’s evidence in this week’s JAMA of a dose-response relationship between peoples’ steps and lower mortality. In other words: more steps done daily is statistically significantly associated with death from all causes. Furthermore, step intensity didn’t make a difference in mortality rates, shown in the JAMA-published study, Association of Daily Step Count and Step Intensity With Mortality Among US Adults. The publication of this study is incredibly well-timed given the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are in lockdown, #StayHome lifestyles this week, and will be for many weeks to come. Going outside for fresh air
In the US COVID-19 Pandemic, A Tension Between the Fiscal and the Physical
“Act fast and do whatever it takes,” insists the second half of the title of a new eBook with contributions from forty leading economists from around the world. The first half of the title is, Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis. The book is discussed in a World Economic Forum essay discussing the economists’ consensus to “act fast.” As the U.S. curve adds new American patients testing positive for the coronavirus, the book and essay illustrate the tension between health consumer versus the health citizen in the U.S. For clinical context, as I write this post on 24th March 2020, today’s U.S.
In A Nation “At War” with the C19 Virus, Partisan Healthcare Differences Persist
More Democrats would want to get tested for the coronavirus (C19) than would Republicans. And, more women than men believe that a vaccine to address the COVID-19 pandemic believe that treatment would be offered at no-or-low-cost under a Democratic president versus President Trump. These are two key insights gleaned from a look into U.S. adults’ perspectives on the C19 virus in the second week of March 2020. What Are Americans’ Views on the Coronavirus Pandemic? asks and answers an NBC News/Commonwealth Fund Health Care Poll published on 20th March 2020. NBC News and the Commonwealth Fund polled 1,006 people 18
The COVID19 Consumer: #AloneTogether and More Health Aware
The number of diagnoses of people testing positive with the coronavirus topped 14,000 today in the U.S., Johns Hopkins COVID-19 interactive map told us this morning. As tests have begun to come on stream from California on the west coast to New York state on the east, the U.S. COVID-19 positives will continue to ratchet up for weeks to come, based on the latest perspectives shared by the most-trusted expert in America, Dr. Anthony Fauci. This report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, published March 13, 2020, forecasts a
Shaky Trust in the Age of the Coronavirus – Who Do Americans Trust for COVID-19 Facts?
One in two Americans trust the Centers for Disease Control for the facts on the coronavirus pandemic, and 43% trust the World Health Organization. But there’s a huge trust deficit when it comes to trusting President Donald Trump on the facts about COVID-19, a poll from Morning Consult and The Hollywood Reporter found. 2,200 U.S. adults were surveyed between 12 and 15 March 2020 on the coronavirus pandemic and their perspectives on the media and political leaders’ information credibility. For news on the pandemic, only one in five Americans believed the President and 18%, the Vice President, Mike Pence, followed
Estimates of COVID-19 Medical Costs in the US: $20K for inpatient stay, $1300 OOP costs
In the midst of growing inpatient admissions and test results for COVID-19, Congress is working as I write this post to finalize a round of legislation to help Americans with the costs-of-living and (hopefully) health care in a national, mandated, clarifying way. Right now in the real world, real patients are already being treated for COVID-19 in American hospitals. Patients are facing health care costs that may result in multi-thousand dollar bills at discharge (or death) that will decimate households’ financial health, particularly among people who don’t have health insurance coverage, covered by skinny or under-benefited plans, and/or lack banked
Lockdown Economics for U.S. Health Consumers
The hashtag #StayHome was ushered onto Twitter by 15 U.S. national healthcare leaders in a USA Today editorial yesterday. The op-ed co-authors included Dr. Eric Topol, Dr. Leana Wen, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Dr. Jordan Shlain, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Andy Slavitt, and other key healthcare opinion leaders. Some states and regions have already mandated that people stay home; at midnight last night, counties in the Bay Area in California instituted this, and there are tightening rules in my area of greater Philadelphia. UBS economist Paul Donovan talked about “Lockdown Economics” in his audio commentary today. Paul’s observations resonated with me as
Telehealth and COVID-19 in the U.S.: A Conversation with Ann Mond Johnson, ATA CEO
Will the coronavirus inspire greater adoption of telehealth in the U.S.? Let’s travel to Shanghai, China where, “the covid-19 epidemic has brought millions of new patients online. They are likely to stay there,” asserts “The smartphone will see you now,” an article in the March 7th 2020 issue of The Economist. The article returns to the advent of the SARS epidemic in China in 2003, which ushered in a series of events: people stayed home, and Chinese social media and e-commerce proliferated. The coronavirus spawned another kind of gift to China and the nation’s health citizens: telemedicine, the essay explains. A
Waking Up a Health Consumer in the COVID-19 Era
With President Trump’s somber speech from the Oval Office last night, we wake up on 12th March 2020 to a ban on most travel from Europe to the U.S., recommendations for hygiene, and call to come together in America. His remarks focused largely on an immigration and travel policy versus science, triaging, testing and treatment of the virus itself. Here is a link to the President’s full remarks from the White House website, presented at about 9 pm on 11 March 2020. Over the past week, I’ve culled several studies and resources to divine a profile of the U.S. consumer
Thank you, Trey Rawles of @Optum, for including me on a list of the top 49 healthcare technology voices to follow on LinkedIn. It’s a great roster of health-tech experts that would also be on my own similar list!
I was invited to be a Judge for the upcoming CES 2025 Innovation Awards in the category of digital health and connected fitness. So grateful to be part of this annual effort to identify the best in consumer-facing health solutions for self-care, condition management, and family well-being. Thank you, CTA!
For the past 15 years, the annual CES conference in Las Vegas has been my go-to meeting for updating my research and network in digital health and consumer-facing electronics that people find meaningful for their well-being, families, and home lives. I'll be back in Vegas in January for a full week of Media Days, one-on-one meetings, and speaking about my perspectives on health consumers.