Dodging Hurricanes, and Other Topics
Good morning!
The Mississippi Gulf Coast for the most part dodged another bullet with Hurricane Sally earlier this week. The erratic, slow-moving storm hit coastal Alabama and the Florida Panhandle hard, and our hearts go out to our neighbors in those areas. I just want to remind everyone that we still have a long way to go until the end of the hurricane season – more than two months – and this is shaping up to be the most active year since 2005, which was, coincidentally, the year of Hurricane Katrina. One more reason I will be glad to see 2020 in my rearview mirror.
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On the COVID-19 front, our 10-day average census of COVID-19 cases is 59 – 40 to 50 fewer than about a month ago. That’s a welcome improvement, but we remain vigilant and are doing all we can to take advantage of this relative lull as flu season approaches. If you have not already, please take a few minutes to get a flu shot.
That brings me to an upcoming event that I know you will want to put on your calendar. At noon on Thursday, Sept. 24, we will memorialize our COVID-19 experience with a virtual livestream event from the University Hospital Chapel. We are calling it “Through Shadow and Light: Reflections on Our COVID-19 Journey.” During that time, through comments from some of our front-line providers and others, we will pause to remember the patients - 186 as of yesterday - who have died from COVID-19 while in our care; to rejoice in the 1,412 patients and counting who our clinical teams have returned to their lives and families; and to celebrate the courageous, selfless work of all those who have contributed to the care of these patients. It will be a special program of remembrance, hope and appreciation that I believe will fill an important need.
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As I indicated in my recent VC Notes on new facilities, the pandemic hasn’t kept us from moving ahead on other fronts. A recent article in eCV reports that our research mission had its second-best year ever in research funding during the fiscal year that ended in June: $82.3 million. (We brought in just shy of $85 million in 2011.) Again, that impressive total is despite all the disruptions the pandemic created in the second half of the year. Our scientists received 347 extramural awards, which is a record, and submitted 524 applications for funding. Total scientific publications grew to 1,033, an increase of more than 30 percent compared to the previous year. Similar growth occurred in our clinical trial programs, with 100 new trials activated (14 associated with COVID-19). The growth in our clinical research program gives us a more diverse research portfolio, expanding on UMMC’s traditional strength in basic science research. Finally, we had one of our strongest years in intellectual property development, with 17 invention disclosures and 17 U.S. patent applications filed, and a total of three patents and one trademark awarded. Congratulations and “good job” to all those directly involved in UMMC’s research enterprise.
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We started Fiscal Year 2021 on a good note, finishing July with a $2.7 million positive margin, which exceeded our budgeted net income. Admittedly, we got some help from federal CARES Act funds that Congress provided to health care entities for pandemic relief, but we are doing a good job in holding down expenses and we’ll need to continue to do that until we’ve fully overcome disruptions to our health care operations. As the economy still struggles and unemployment remains high, we continue to see upticks in our uninsured patient numbers – 16 percent for the main campus and 1 in 5 patients for our health system. Overall, I’m pleased with our progress and appreciate everyone’s willingness to bear down and help us get through the financial impacts of this.
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The pandemic has caused us to adapt in ways that we might not have otherwise, or to hit milestones that would have been reached at a much more gradual pace. One of those is telehealth. During the first eight months of FY20, UMMC was averaging a little more than 200 telehealth clinic appointments a month. Last April, at the height of the shelter-in-place order, our providers made more than 24,000 “visits.” In June, as we started bringing clinics back online, we still logged more than 12,000 telehealth appointments. There’s no question that telehealth is now “baked in” to our habits, and if insurance companies continue to reimburse providers for these services as they’ve been required to during the pandemic, there will be no going back to the days of just a couple hundred telehealth patient visits in a typical month.
That makes this the perfect time to introduce a new chief telehealth officer. Dr. Saurabh Chandra, who was profiled in last week’s eCV, has joined UMMC from New York’s largest health system, Northwell Health. You may remember that for a time, Northwell was one of the systems hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. As Northwell’s telehealth program medical director and a board-certified critical care physician, Dr. Chandra was uniquely positioned to apply the capabilities of the telehealth platform with COVID-19 patients in the critical care setting. I’m excited about all the ways he will take our already excellent program and reimagine it for this next new era of remote medical care.
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Until next week, stay well, stay safe, and stay #UMMCStrong.