May 12, 2021 Dr. Hundley Talks About Cardiac MRI Assessment Early
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Firefox https://app.constantcontact.com/pages/campaigns/email May 12, 2021 Email the editor Dr. Hundley talks about cardiac MRI assessment Many thanks to Dr. Greg Hundley, director of VCU's Pauley Heart Center, for yesterday's insightful Lunch of Tuesdays talk on the use of cardiovascular magnetic resonance to assess patients with cardiovascular disease. RAM was thrilled to offer the meeting as a hybrid model, with some members attending in person for the first time in over a year! Other members watched via Zoom. If you missed it, CLICK HERE for a recording. Passcode: i+Zt1X.b Early voting underway for Dem nominees. Make your voice heard. 2021 is quiet in much of the country, but in Virginia, it's a big year for elections. We'll be electing a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as all delegates in the General Assembly. Last week we told you about the Republican statewide convention to select candidates for the November election. The GOP chose a convention over a primary to select its nominees after a protracted battle among leadership. The results: Glenn Youngkin is the 1 of 9 5/13/2021, 8:30 AM Firefox https://app.constantcontact.com/pages/campaigns/email Republican nominee for governor, Winsome Sears for lieutenant governor and Jason S. Miyares for attorney general. On June 8, Democrats will hold the more traditional primary to nominate candidates. Early and absentee voting is now underway; CLICK HERE for information and ballot requests. In the gubernatorial contest, contenders include Lee Carter, Justin Fairfax, Jennifer Carroll Foy, Terry McAuliffe and Jennifer McClellan. Everyone can vote in the the Democrat primary, even if you are identify as a Republican or Independent. Next week, we'll look at the Republican primaries for the House of Delegates. For the House, several prominent Democratic incumbents face challenges (incumbents marked with *). Below are the local Democrat candidates for House of Delegates who have primary challengers. If you don't see the district listed, then the incumbent is running unopposed for the nomination. District 66 Linnard Harris, Sr. Katie Sponsler District 68 Dawn Adams* Kyle Elliott District 71 Jeffrey Bourne* Richard Walker District 74 Lamont Bagby* John Dantzler Not sure of your district? CLICK HERE for the General Assembly's Who's My Legislator tool. Deadline approaching! Submit your legislative proposals The Academy’s Legislative Committee invites you to share your legislative ideas. Describe the problem, define the issue and propose a possible solution. Submit your ideas by May 19 for consideration at the Committee's May 26 meeting. Make plans to advocate for your legislative idea at our May 26 meeting which will be held via Zoom. If you are unable to join on May 26, please find a representative to present the proposal in your stead. The Committee will determine which legislative recommendations should be forwarded to the Medical Society of Virginia for consideration at their Advocacy Summit and possible inclusion in the 2022 Legislative Agenda. CLICK HERE for sample proposals considered at last year's MSV Advocacy Summit. Questions? Contact Lara Knowles at [email protected] or call her at 804-622-8137. Legislative recommendations due WEDNESDAY, MAY 19! SUBMIT YOUR LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL Northam hopes to lift Virginia's COVID-19 restrictions on June 15, 2 of 9 5/13/2021, 8:30 AM Firefox https://app.constantcontact.com/pages/campaigns/email will follow CDC guidance on masks Buoyed by rising vaccinations and falling COVID-19 cases, Gov. Ralph Northam said last week that he hopes to lift emergency restrictions on public gatherings and social distancing by June 15, reports the Times-Dispatch. With those restrictions due to ease on May 15 for restaurants, entertainment venues and indoor social gatherings, Northam raised the possibility that he will end them entirely a month later — if people get vaccinated against the coronavirus disease and infections continue to fall. The governor also raised the possibility that he will allow the state of emergency to expire on June 30, more than 15 months after it began. Virginia begins shifting vaccine supplies to primary care doctors Primary care doctors are about to get what many have wanted since they knew a coronavirus vaccine was in development: a chance to offer patients shots at their offices, says The Virginian-Pilot. Virginia public health officials say they’ll be pushing more doses to doctors in the coming weeks. Politico reports that the Biden administration and state health officials are rushing to overcome logistical hurdles to get more shots into doctors’ offices, believing that physicians who have largely been excluded from the inoculation effort so far could be key to boosting vaccination rates. Physicians have been lobbying the White House and state governments for direct shipments of vaccines, but officials instead focused their efforts on mass vaccination sites and other places that could quickly immunize hundreds or even thousands of people daily. Based on that history, AMA President Susan R. Bailey, M.D., said some physicians have been discouraged about getting vaccines, so they haven’t signed up to administer them. Public health experts: CDC’s COVID-19 messaging is out of step with the moment When the CDC released new guidelines last month for mask wearing, it announced that “less than 10 percent” of COVID-19 transmission was occurring outdoors. Media organizations repeated the statistic, and it quickly became a standard description of the frequency of outdoor transmission, says The New York Times. But the number is almost certainly misleading. It appears to be based partly on a misclassification of some COVID transmission that actually took place in enclosed spaces. An even bigger issue is the extreme caution of CDC officials, who picked a benchmark — 10 percent — so high that nobody could reasonably dispute it. Stat reports that public health officials, academics, clinicians and other experts have slowly worked to refine and clarify their understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 works. But the CDC has been curiously slow in catching up to consensus, public health experts say. As early as last summer, many researchers converged on the idea that aggressively spraying down surfaces was likely unnecessary, but the CDC only settled on that idea last month. And there are other examples, from the CDC's again late-to-the-party admission that the coronavirus is airborne to issuing guidelines three months after vaccinations started in the U.S. on what activities vaccinated people could safely do. The director of the CDC on Tuesday defended the agency against these accusations, reports The NYTimes. At a Senate hearing with other top federal health officials on the federal government’s pandemic response, Republicans accused Dr. Rochelle P. 3 of 9 5/13/2021, 8:30 AM Firefox https://app.constantcontact.com/pages/campaigns/email Walensky, of accommodating special interests in the agency’s guidance for schools and of failing to recognize the low risk of outdoor transmission of the coronavirus. FDA authorizes Pfizer vaccine for children 12-15 The FDA on Monday authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in the U.S., a crucial step in the nation’s steady recovery from the pandemic and a boon to millions of American families eager for a return to normalcy, reports The New York Times. CLICK HERE for a statement from Dr. Danny Avula. A VCU survey reports that more than 60% of Virginia parents are willing to get their children vaccinated. Most physicians now work outside of private practice Healthcare Dive reports that for the first time, most physicians worked outside of physician-owned practices in 2020, as doctors continue to gravitate toward employment by hospitals and other organizations, according to a new American Medical Association survey. The trade group's latest Physician Practice Benchmark Survey found that 49.1% of patient care physicians worked in physician-owned practices in 2020, a drop of almost 5 percentage points from 2018, when that figure was 54%. It's 11 percentage points lower than 2012, when 60% of physicians worked in physician-owned practices. Hospitals are one of the largest employers of physicians, with the proportion increasing nearly 50 % between 2012 and 2020. There has been ongoing debate in recent years about physician burnout, with much of it attributed to their having to balance the administrative tasks of running a practice with caring for patients. Now, it appears that practicing as an employee is taking over. Federal probe of drug middlemen urged After years of accusations, a bipartisan group in the U.S. Senate wants federal regulators to investigate whether drug middlemen and their parent companies are rigging the system to raise prices and pad their pockets, reports The Virginia Mercury. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D- Wash.) last month filed legislation that would require the federal trade commission to investigate whether health care giants are using their dominance to bilk consumers and government payers such as Medicaid out of enormous sums of money. They also want the FTC to examine whether the corporations are unfairly driving community pharmacists and other competitors out of business. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, “play a significant role in determining how much patients and the government pay for prescriptions,” Grassley said. “Much of their business model is cloaked in secrecy, and the industry has experienced significant consolidation in recent years. Our bill will provide Congress with a better understanding of the PBM industry, so any future legislation can better protect patients and safeguard competition.” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring joined a bipartisan group of 46 attorneys general in a 2020 amicus brief pressing for the right of states to regulate pharmacy benefits managers.