Dispensed: Why the US healthcare system could be pushed to its limits during the coronavirus pandemic

Lydia Ramsey

Mar 13, 2020, 21:23 IST

Dispensed: Why the US healthcare system could be pushed to its limits during the coronavirus pandemic

AP Photo/Martin Meissner

A nurse demonstrates taking a sample for a coronavirus test at the infection station of the university hospital in Essen, Germany, Thursday, March 12, 2020.

Hello,

Greetings from Brooklyn, where the pup is happy we're working from home, and the streets are starting to get eerily quiet.

You're reading Dispensed, Business Insider's weekly healthcare newsletter, where we're doing our best to social distance and keep you up to date on what's going on with the coronavirus pandemic.

Are you new to the newsletter? You can sign up here.

Over the course of the week, we've seen states and cities around the US take some pretty drastic moves in the hopes of halting the spread of the novel coronavirus. Sports have been canceled, Disneyland closes Saturday, and Broadway has been mandated to go dark until mid-April.

(Read on to see why canceling these events and helping to #flattenthecurve could be key to keeping the effects of this outbreak within the bounds of the US healthcare system.)

Over here on the healthcare team, we've been working hard (from home) to get a sense of how the response to the outbreak has been going within the US health system.

Coronavirus mask training Jefferson Health

Hannah Yoon for Business Insider

Dr. Edward Jasper (right) trains a doctor on the protective equipment that could be used in treating a coronavirus patient.

How hospitals are preparing

Zachary Tracer and I spent last week talking to hospitals and health systems around the US about how they're preparing for the outbreak.

"We've not yet seen an epidemic or pandemic in our lifetimes of this size and scope," Becca Bartles, the executive director of infectious disease prevention at Providence St. Joseph Health System told us. "We're gearing up for something extremely significant."

You can read the full story here.

Intensive care units, in particular, could be hit hard. We're keeping our eye out to see whether there'll be shortages of supplies, staff, and space as the outbreak ramps up.

Are you on the front lines of this at your pharmacy, primary care office, urgent care center, or hospital? I want to chat with you (when you have a free moment!). I'm at lramsey@businessinsider.com.

I checked in with PSJH CEO Rod Hochman on Wednesday, and he shared that the health system - with a major presence in the Seattle area that's getting hit hard with the virus - has yet to reach the point where it's needing to add surge capacity, but it has contingency plans in place.

I'd initially reached out to him because I was curious if anything fundamentally changes with the pandemic designation the World Health Organization announced on Wednesday. The resounding answer I got from healthcare professionals, insurers, and employer benefits pros was a resounding "no," at least in the US.

"From a standpoint of what we're doing, it changes absolutely nothing," Hochman told me.

Hochman and I ended up talking a bit more about the problems the US has had in ramping up coronavirus testing, which has certainly hindered the US response to the outbreak. Already, some of the labs that the health system is working with are running out of materials needed to run the tests.

Aylin Woodward and I have the full story of the shortage in reagents happening as the US starts to bring more testing online.

And the big story, in case you missed it last Friday: I got ahold of a February presentation hosted by the American Hospital Association, an organization that represents thousands of hospitals and health systems.

In the presentation, one expert projected there could be as many as 96 million coronavirus cases in the US, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths associated with the novel coronavirus.

The American Hospital Association told me the webinar reflects the views of the experts who spoke on it, not its own.

Read the full story and presentation here:

A leaked presentation reveals the document US hospitals are using to prepare for a major coronavirus outbreak. It estimates 96 million US coronavirus cases and 480,000 deaths.

New to BI Prime? You can use my link here to get 20% off your BI Prime subscription.

David Silverman / Getty

The race to find treatments and vaccines for the novel coronavirus

Meanwhile, Andrew Dunn has been diligently keeping tabs on the efforts to develop new treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 (efforts the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and Mastercard are also joining in on).

For starters, you can get paid $1,100 to test the potential coronavirus vaccine that was developed by Moderna.

Andrew also has a roundup on all the efforts to develop vaccines and what to keep an eye out for as development progresses.

Data from Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug remdesivir, which is being studied for use in treating COVID-19 should be out in April. Here's what he's keeping an eye out for when the results come in.

His latest: pharma giant Eli Lilly is also joining in with a Canadian biotech to create an antibody therapy to fight the virus.

Read the full story here:

'We've never moved at this speed before:' $120 billion pharma giant Eli Lilly just teamed up with a biotech startup to fight the coronavirus pandemic

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

Elsewhere in healthcare news...

In case you need a quick break from COVID-19 news, here's a quick update from Big Pharma's first attempt to take a page out of some of the direct-to-consumer healthcare companies' playbooks.

Just a few weeks after Bausch Health launched a prescribing feature on its website Dermatology.com, it decided to pull the plug. Andrew and I have the news here.

I'll be curious to see if in light of this other pharmaceuticals tread more lightly into adding on models that prescribe and ship medications straight to your door.

On a somewhat related note, I took some time in February to map out the startups that are taking new approaches to the massive pharmacy market. Come for details on how big they're getting, how much funding they've raised, and promises to get to profitability.