Articles: pandemics.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, access to in-person care was limited, and regulations requiring in-person dispensing of mifepristone for medical abortions were relaxed. The effect of the pandemic and accompanying regulatory changes on abortion use is unknown. ⋯ Health Resources and Services Administration.
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Restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic affected many health behaviours, including diet. We aimed to examine changes in food and drink purchasing during the first 3 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in England. ⋯ National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School for Public Health Research (SPHR).
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The Medicare Primary Care Exception (PCE) permits indirect supervision of residents performing lower-complexity visits in primary care settings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicare expanded the PCE to all patient visits regardless of complexity. This study investigates how PCE expansion changed resident billing practices at a family medicine residency during calendar year 2020. We hypothesized that residents not constrained by the PCE would bill more high-level visits. ⋯ With the PCE expansion, senior family medicine resident physicians at UWFMR used higher-complexity billing codes at a rate approximating that of attending physicians. The findings of this study have implications regarding the financial well-being and sustainability of primary care residency training and raise a relevant policy question about whether the PCE expansion should persist. More research is needed to determine whether these findings were replicated in other primary care residency practices, the impact on resident education, and the impact on patient outcomes.
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Critical care was established partially in response to a polio epidemic in the 1950s. In the intervening 70 yr, several epidemics and pandemics have placed critical care and allied services under extreme pressure. ⋯ In addition to clinical acumen, mounting an effective critical care response to a pandemic requires local, national, and international coordination in a diverse array of fields from research collaboration and governance to organisation of critical care networks and applied biomedical ethics in the eventuality of triage situations. This review provides an introduction to an array of topics that pertain to different states of pandemic acuity: interpandemic preparedness, alert, surge activity, recovery and relapse through the literature and experience of recent pandemics including COVID-19, H1N1, Ebola, and SARS.