Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1260323
12 ASC MANAGEMENT Wisconsin clinic readies to open hospital with surgery center — 3 insights By Eric Oliver M arshfield (Wis.) Clinic Health System plans to open a hospital in Minocqua, Wis., in July after delaying the opening in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, local radio station WSAU reports. What you should know: 1. Marshfield Medical Center-Minocqua will feature a surgery center, an emergency department, physical therapy services, 14 patient rooms and a birthing center, among other features. 2. The hospital was supposed to open in April, but health system administrators delayed the opening, anticipating a surge of COVID-19 patients. The system could also not get final regula- tory review approval because the state was shut down due to COVID-19. 3. COVID-19 didn't affect the Minocqua community as was previ- ously projected, so the health system feels it has ample resourc- es to open the hospital. n 3 specialties at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 — 4 takeaways By Angie Stewart A nesthesiologists, emergency medicine and ophthalmology physicians face the highest risk of contracting COVID-19, suggests new data explained by Medscape. Four takeaways: 1. Led by Royce Chen, MD, a preprint study published on medRxiv examined how COVID-19 affected resident physicians in New York City. Residency program direc- tors were surveyed about how many of their residents contracted the virus from March 2 to April 12. e find- ings have not been peer-reviewed. 2. Researchers received 91 responses, which represented 24 specialties and 2,306 residents. At least one resident tested positive for COVID-19 in 45.1 percent of pro- grams. ere were 101 confirmed positive cases among resident physicians, as well as an additional 163 residents presumed to be positive for COVID-19. 3. Infection risk differed by specialty, researchers found. ey weren't surprised that emergency medicine and anesthesiology specialists were at higher risk of contract- ing the coronavirus, but ophthalmology seemed unusual, according to Dr. Chen, director of the ophthalmology residency program at Columbia University Irving Medi- cal Center in New York City. "People think of [ophthalmology] as outpatient, low- acuity, but the patient and doctor are less than 2 feet apart," Dr. Chen told Medscape. "And neither patients nor physicians were wearing masks at the beginning of March." Additionally, some research has shown that COVID-19 can spread through the eyes. 4. e study's limitations include that it's a preprint and lacks comparison to attending physicians, according to A. Elisabeth Abramowicz, MD, director of the Valhalla, N.Y.-based Westchester Medical Center Anesthesiol- ogy Residency Training Program. Only specialties that received over 100 responses were included, and personal protective equipment use has improved since the survey was distributed, so results could differ today if the survey were repeated. n Cardiology society supports migration of select cardiology procedures to ASCs By Eric Oliver T he Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interven- tions issued a statement in support of CMS' decision to allow select percutaneous coronary interventions to be performed in the ASC setting. What you should know: 1. CMS began reimbursing the procedures in January 2020. 2. These procedures can be performed in ASCs because clinical outcomes for patients discharged the same day were similar to those who underwent the procedure in a hospital and stayed for routine overnight observation. 3. Moving select procedures to the ASC setting has potential to "lower cost of care without a compromise in clinical outcomes." "The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions supported this coverage decision provided the quality and safety standards for PCI in an ASC were equivalent to the hospi- tal setting," the group wrote in the paper. n