Midweek update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19–

Fierce Healthcare and Healthcare Dive report on CVS Health’s positive first quarter 2020 results. According to Fierce Healthcare,

[CVS Health] CEO Larry Merlo said that utilization of telehealth and virtual visits through its MinuteClinic locations was up 600% compared to the first quarter of 2019, while home delivery of prescriptions was up 1000%.

In addition, he said, the company is seeing a fourfold increase in the number of customers adding other items from the front of their stores to home pharmacy deliveries. CVS is also seeing increased engagement with customers and members through its app, Merlo said.

Healthcare Dive adds

Though coronavirus had “minimal impact on the quarter,” CVS does expect a “big impact in April,” CFO Eva Boratto told investors on a Wednesday morning call. Consumers increasingly stayed at home in April, resulting in a sharp reduction in foot traffic to stores, and filed fewer prescriptions due to fewer doctor visits, according to CVS’ preliminary results from the month. Those headwinds could persist throughout the second quarter.

Interesting links —

  • The Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Roundtable on COVID-19 policy was held today. Among the speaker was the FEHBlog’s favorite health policy expert Avik Roy whose testimony reads in pertinent part as follows:

[T]raffic fatalities is a good mental framework for thinking about how to live with COVID-19. Instead of abolishing cars, we enforce traffic laws and speed limits, and prohibit drunk driving. We set a minimum standard for car safety. But, most of all, we expect individual drivers to be responsible for their own conduct.
Something similar can work for COVID-19. Businesses can deep-clean their surfaces and provide hand sanitizer and masks to their workers and customers. People can wash their hands regularly, and minimize close contact with strangers. This is, in fact, what East Asian countries did after the original SARS outbreak in 2003, and it enabled them to gradually return to normal life, despite the absence of a vaccine or effective treatments.

  • As the FEHBlog aims to be a voice of calm and reason in the FEHBlog storm he notes that PsychHub has created a COVID-19 Mental Resource Hub and that the Atlantic has debunked, to his satisfaction, an unsubstantiated claim that the COVID-19 virus has mutated.
  • The CARES Act created a Pandemic Response Accountability Committee which has its own website. The site’s purpose is “to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of these [CARES Act relief] funds” totaling $2.3 trillion.