Ethics

Nursing Home Quality & Safety Earlier this month, the Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes issued their final report for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The task of the Commission was “to solicit lessons Read More

Testing This N.Y. Times article describes difficulties in obtaining timely and nearby testing for children and the implications for public health mitigation efforts. In many instances, existing free testing sites set a minimum age that does not include many school-age Read More

Resource Allocation This ethics roundtable by Baumrucker et al. discusses the difficult case of critical care resource priority in the context of COVID-19, presenting a case in which an otherwise healthy 59-year-old and a 17-year-old both require ventilator care with Read More

Nationwide Eviction Freeze The CDC issued an Emergency Action this week implementing a nationwide temporary freeze on evictions. The freeze runs from September 4 through December 31, 2020. Here is a link to the CDC’s Declaration Form which must be filled Read More

Racial and Ethnic Disparities This article by Figueroa et al. analyses racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 rates in Massachusetts, which has had one of the highest incidence rates in the U.S. The disparate impact of the pandemic on Black Read More

Resource Allocation This article by Webb, Shah & Fernandez Lynch addresses ethical issues in allocating access to unproven but promising drugs that become available through Pre-Approval Access (PAA) programs and Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). PAA programs allow access to unapproved Read More

COVID-19 Policy Playbook Released This new report from 50 leading experts on public health law, health care law, and global health law and policy analyzes developments in U.S. law and policy during the Covid-19 pandemic. The report, which was sponsored Read More

Supplies As reported in this Axios article, FDA released a list of medical supplies that remain in short supply. FDA is required to provide this list under provisions of the CARES Act passed in March 2020, based on mandatory reports Read More

Health Care Workers This article by Feinstein et al. addresses the potential for a mental health crisis among frontline health care workers as a result of the pandemic and surrounding circumstances, such as lack of PPE, shortages of critical care Read More

RESOURCE ALLOCATION  This Health Affairs article by Kanter, Segal & Groeneveld (also covered in this STAT article) discusses the role of income disparities in access to ICU beds as related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors examine disparities by median Read More