Wednesday Media Briefing on COVID-19 / HealthChoice

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[Music] good morning everyone I'm Jill Chadwick I'm clearly not dr. Stephen Stites he is a medical professional and as as that is true he has an emergency he's attending to right now he does anticipate that he will join us and then we're just gonna play musical chairs I'm gonna get up and he's going to come back in and take over but right now I'm driving this train and so what I want to do first is go to dr. Dana Hawkinson who is out in Colorado

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and let's get an update of the numbers and oculi this morning yeah hi can you hear me so we yeah was able to get a good night's sleep and a nice shower after camping out the wilderness and it was good numbers for today in the hospital are 22 or sorry 23 but I think the main issue is that we've had some discharges

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unfortunately with those 23 I think we had 22 yesterday we've had just the same number or as many admissions so I think that's the big story here we have had the same 19 20 21 22 for the past week or 10 days but I think the real issue you know today and going into the weekend is that even though we've had a large number of discharges from the hospital with Kovan we have had just as many or if not more admissions with Kovan and so I think that's the big

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story and that's a big thing we really have to be concerned about well that is kind of discouraging news to hear this morning we will check back in with you in a little bit and ask you some more questions and we appreciate that update all right in studio with us this morning our two guests here from the hospital to my left is Colette LASIK she's the vice president of revenue cycle and to my right is Jason grande Stremme he's the executive director of continuum of care

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and today they're gonna help us walk through some of these and navigate some of these costs that are related to kovat care we know a lot of people are suffering both from the disease and also financially and these two experts are going to help us and help you navigate some of that but first we have one more bit of crisis communication today and for that we're going to go to Jessica Louisville it was over at the kayuu Med Center and she is getting going to tell us about a blood drive and I'm getting waved off we're having a little bit of technical problems this morning can I

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get a big thumbs up on that all right we're gonna come back to just cut in just a moment Colette let's start with you we know that kogut has impacted the work that your team does explain to the people that are watching what your team is what the work is that they do and how Kove it is impacting you yeah I appreciate that and again our team is is what we call revenues so when you think about a health system you know we create revenue by seeing patients right we've been doing that for a hundred years and what's really important to us is that we take great

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financial care of our patients so we do that every day we do that through our financial counseling staff we do that through a third-party vendor that we have here to help patients in need that might need to help get onto Medicaid or other programs and we also want to make sure that that we have things in place to help our patients every day so you're right Jill I mean today we're hearing from more patients probably than we ever have because things have changed you know maybe they don't have a job for the first time that they've ever known in their lifetime or perhaps they're laid

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off and they don't know when they're going to go back so when patients get that bill and they're they're scared or they're upset we want to hear from them we've got a call center a financial call center that's open from 7:30 to 5:30 every day patients can always contact us via my chart and know that we're here to help and we understand that your situation may be totally different today than it was a week ago and if it is call us we're here to help I know that 11 years ago I came out 10 years ago I came

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to this hospital as what I call a dumb news reporter you don't know what you don't know right and I know that from that experience I started learning about things like codes tell us how codes drive the billing process what is a code yeah that's a great question so like everything in technology today we talked to our insurance companies and codes so there are national codes we have procedure codes that tell them I did this procedure to this patient and then

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we have diagnosis codes that tells them and this diagnosis is what what happened with this patient while they were here so with Kovac we got a whole new set of a hundred plus codes to be able to talk to our insurance companies but we literally have tens of thousands of codes that we use every day and that's a national standard that all healthcare providers use to talk to the insurance companies because we do that electronically in binary code I mean it's basically old binary oh that that we use but that allows us

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to get our information on a claim to a payer real-time so as soon as we have all that information ready we can send it electronically to the payer they can receive it electronically they can adjudicate the claim and then send us actually the payments and all the information on the claim electronically and we post that to our system so with covin as Jason will talk about what telehealth it's just really expanded that set of codes and it's changed very rapidly CMS has changed the rules on us virtually weekly as they were learning

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and setting up new codes for all the other insurance companies to follow as one of our doctors said we're building the airplane as we're flying exactly what it feels like and some apply right over here to you and I was astonished when we were talking about telehealth medicine in setting it up you said that there were a hundred and thirty-five new codes just for that yeah that's correct you know one of the things that we closed would look at is CMS and what they kind of come out with with telehealth every year telemedicine you know we're always interested in some of the new codes that they come out with every year and

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sometimes they're a little slow on the uptake we were astonished with when the pandemic came across back in March how quick they were to respond with new codes I think for a number of reasons one was to really make sure that our patients felt supported their patients felt supported you know I think 40 percent of Americans that we know have some form of Medicare and they came out quite soon in in early March with 135 telemedicine codes and really paid

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attention to not only those who had you know broadband access but those who did not have broadband access I think 85 of those 135 codes were specific to just telephone really reaching rural America where we know there's a lot of people who don't have access to broadband or do have a cell phone plan but it costs data and they get nervous about losing or being charged data plans when they're using video and so we're very excited you know watching what Seema the you know director of CMS said two weeks ago is

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that these 135 codes look like they're going to stay around for a while we're very excited about that I know a lot of our patients were nervous and we're asking us about that even with Laura Kelly our governor she extended the payment for Medicaid here in the state of Kansas to the middle end of January of next year which has been a true blessing as we know that a lot of people have been contacted by their insurance companies that it's ending here soon and for our governor to come out and do that I think in the

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conversations we're having with insurance companies they're going to extend that as well and so more to come but love to see some of the movement we've had and the calmness of fear of hey if I'm seeing my physician or provider via telehealth will this be covered and in great news it has been yeah that's a big that's a big milestone Craig milestone right and the other big overarching message is if kovat 19 is the primary diagnosis it too is being covered by insurance companies you're

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finding finding yes and we heard early on from most of our payers that they were going to follow the CMS guidelines meaning that they were going to process those claims where Kovac was the primary diagnosis or screening that they would not be applying deductibles and co-pays to patients plans so we're watching that closely to make sure that that does hold true we've had some that haven't and we've had to we've had to make those calls to those insurance companies in fact we just met with one of our major payers yesterday and said we're having

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problems with these so that puts a lot of burden on us because we want to make sure that patients don't get a bill that they shouldn't so part of it is making sure that we're holding insurance companies accountable and that they've got their systems set up in a way because again they've had to change on the fly to write to make sure that their systems are set up to recognize these claims when they come in so that they process them and not apply deductable space like they normally would I imagine because we're all so full that you have other business besides covered going on

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just like you if someone can't get through whether it's here or at another you know wherever you are getting your health care are these kind of counselors available and information what is your advice just overarching to people that are in the situation yeah absolutely and I've actually been talking with my counterparts across the city over the last month and just really talking about what are they experiencing at their Hospital it's the same as here very quickly they heard from patients probably within the first week of kovat

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of hey my situation's changed I need help and we all have financial counselors on staff we're all here to really help those patients and even if a patient starts at another hospital and they've started a Medicaid application and they come here we can help and vice versa that's something that we've done in this industry for a very long time we're all here to take care of the of the patients in our community not just clinically but financially because these patients do go back and forth between between health systems you you have a great quote that I always quote you on and I'm sure it's

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true for anybody that's in the medical profession you know the the worst thing you want to do is give a patient great care in Surprise them within sunrise and what's a bill to me that's that's one of the worst things that any of us can do so I think as an industry that's something that we're looking really hard to try to change how can we take all the information about your insurance Jill and where you're at in your benefit plan right if you met your deductible you met your copay what services are we expecting you to have as best we know and then be able to give you a good

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faith estimate upfront of what we think you're gonna wait what we think you're gonna owe and what your what your options are to make those payments right I will tell you Colette taught me another lesson too and it's I bet you know your car insurance better than you do your health insurance Jill and I said could be but it's because it's a lot more complicated right it is but you have empowered me and that's what we're gonna try to do this morning before we continue this conversation though I see Jessica level I can see her now and she has a really important message for us we

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are having a huge shortage of blood here in the in the metro and she's going to show us how safe we've talked about how safe it is she's going to show us how safe it is Jess hey Jill the morning so good to see you and hear your voice this morning so yes so we are here to show you how easy how quick and how safe it is to give blood so I want to bring in the expert here when the Community Blood Center this is Diane new Becker and see if we keep in Croton you know we keep our dedicated to success one of

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many safety precautions we're taking but we're gonna actually I'm gonna sign up and get blood here in just a moment but I want to I want you to walk us through the process of folks out in the community know how easy it is and also how safe your you're making this in this time of Kovac so tell us what this first step is sure so we put in a pre-screening area just for kovat purposes as an exterior precaution so we make check if you have appointments we have a couple of pre-screening questions we take your temperature provide a mask and water if you need it and then we go

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to our regular process which is registration okay so we'll show that in water while we're talking about water is that something you should be doing at night before you come in you should be doing it the day before and the morning of you should have good have eaten really really well iron rich foods are preferred so that you have a good experience okay so let's walk in here I'm gonna have Nick kind of walk us in so this is the this is what you would normally do right and in an on time of covent right how this would be the first stration so tell us what's happening in this stuff so they register you they ask you your name address phone number if

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you Britt if you've been with committee Blood Center if you donated before and then they just give you a tablet with a bunch of question their questions on the questionnaire okay and you're gonna step over here right these little little screens over here right answer those questions ons tablet right right right that takes how many minutes about me less than five yes so then you're gonna walk down here he'll give the tablet back to the reception right and then yes we walk down here and we're going to do the medical histories over here straight ahead back there where we're gonna see some different testing that's gonna happen over there to make sure that it's

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right right so we want to make sure that you are eligible to donate so we're gonna do we're gonna take your temperature again we're gonna do blood pressure and we're gonna ask you screening questions and take your hemoglobin level that's important to see make sure that you qualify five or ten minutes for that too yeah yeah if that yeah okay and then here's where the magic happens right the magic I'd you say you're only here maybe 7 to 12 minutes I served under 12 minutes yeah so this is probably the shortest amount of time is actually giving blood and of course we take all the safety

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precautions necessary and we've always done that but we added a few we have we do extra cleaning sterilization our staff does have to get close to you during this process but that's really the only part that we really don't maintain our 6 foot distance source up and down because you know as expected people are concerned about going out anywhere at this point so now you're wanting people to come back right are you seeing those numbers come out how important is it for people to come out and give blood it's extremely important and what's happening is our businesses

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are canceling their mobile blood drives because they don't have their staff back so we are not getting those drives back that's thousands of units that we're missing right there so we're trying to make that up with doing large venue drives and that sort of thing but we still need a lot more blood drive so if any if there's any community organization churches out there that are willing to do a blood drive please do we are at a three-day or less inventory for blood products and we like to have a seven-day so it's we're very very urgent need for blood if

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you've ever considered giving blood if you're healthy please come out and give blood make an appointment you said that make an appointment is what we prefer we do take walk-ins if capacity permits okay and that's just helping to maintain the social distancing in sofa then after this step you have to go over here to my favorite part which is the snack tape yes I'm gonna sign up and get blood here in just a minute I'm gonna go through this and at the end guess what I get better butters yeah we have all refreshments Oreos pretzels Nutter butters we want you here at least 10

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minutes just to recover and then you're free to go after that all right sounds good we'll check back with you Jill at the end of the show all right sounds good you and I think you'll like my fave do we have any questions from the media this morning if not then we're going to go right to our community questions and dr. Hawkinson this is going to be for you and this is Nancy and she wants to know is there any hope or prove that having a very strong

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immune system can help prevent getting the virus or if you do contract it if you're not having too many symptoms so can it make it less she says she's not been sick in ten years she's healthy and the reason she's asking if she wants to go traveling yeah I wouldn't use that as our main reason as to why we think you know we can travel or take a license to not do the things that we've been talking about with Basking and hand hygiene and not touching your face you

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know you are still susceptible everybody is susceptible to this virus we don't really have a grade of immune system whether you have a strong immune system or a weak immune system unless we're talking about obviously like cancer patients and other people who are immune suppressed due to certain types of drugs or health conditions but otherwise we don't really have a grading system for someone who has a strong immune system our or weak immune system you know everybody needs to continue to take these precautions of what we have been

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talking about the pillars of infection prevention especially for coronavirus because really everybody is going to be susceptible and again as you get further up in age over 50 over 60 over 70 the likelihood that you will have symptoms and have some immune response to this is greater compared to say if you're 20 or younger or they have shown that you know generally many of those patients will have less or no symptoms do we know the demographics of the

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people that are currently in our ICU are they older younger do they have underlying health conditions do you have that information you know I don't have that information I'm sure you know we could get it again we have seen in the ICU but in our Hospital as well I have taken care of a 27 year old otherwise healthy female we have seen in our ICU there have been arranged from 20s to 30s obviously to 60 70s 80s but currently I don't know the

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the demographics of the patients that are at our hospital or needing critical care services in our ICU all right Lindsay wants to know when you give numbers of positive coded patients each day is that only coded patients with no other illness who have tested positive in a procedure prior to a procedure just coming in sick Cova diagnosis what do you know about that yeah absolutely yes so we are screening all of our inpatient

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admissions and this includes people who are admitted for surgeries this includes trauma victims who come in we are screening all of those people as well as obviously testing people who come in with symptoms those numbers that we talk about are just all of our patients that are in the hospital for one reason or another that have tested positive should note that most of those patients that we talk about are coming in for kovetz specifically typically what our average number of people that we have just found

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kovat four who come in for certain other reasons it's typically about one a day so the numbers on patients that have kovat symptoms are certainly the majority of the patients that are in the hospital there could possibly one or two that are just here for another reason but have tested positive for koban are the reason that the numbers are climbing and positive because we're doing more testing you know we are doing more testing but we've also talked about the

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percentage of positive so even though that we're doing testing the actual percentage the number of people that were were getting positive has certainly increased from say where it was two or three with two months ago or six or eight weeks ago just because we know the virus is out there it's spreading you know even dr. pouchy has said well now we think we are seeing that surge that originally we thought for Memorial Day we are thinking we are seeing that now and again more people are out there it tends to be you

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know seven to ten days that people will start seeking treatment after development of symptoms for the most part and again that is a lot in part due to the inflammatory response the immune system response from the virus itself all right this one would be for you Collette is testing covered it's coded testing cover covered testing covered I would say in general yes most of our insurance companies have told us along with CMS that if it is for screening

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that they will cover those tests yes and I had a person who I'm trying to find their name but they had asked earlier on a previous broadcast they had asked if our multiple tests covered so you know I'm because the test doesn't last but for you know a day or two the results yeah I know that's a valid question we're just starting to get into that especially with college is starting to look to go back to discussion and and

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we've got ball teams that are starting up so those are questions that we've actually posed to our insurance companies just yesterday we had that that question with Blue Cross Blue Shield to go back and say how often will you cover this and so we're just starting to get into that here we go flying the airplane a building and as we go yeah we'll check back with you then at some future time on whether whether that is going to be covered Christie wants to know dr. Hawkinson a suggestion on when to get the flu shot this year she sent it usually wait until October

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because of how long it lasts should we get it earlier and get a second flu shot at the end of the season that's a great question for vaccination in general and we've always continued to be a proponent of at nation we feel that with kovat especially with Pediatrics people are missing out on their normal vaccinations so for influenza and especially for my HIV patients and other patients I've always advocated or say October early November or early November depending on how early the influenza season starts

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and just as she had said it's because we want it to last so typically the strongest immunity for influenza vaccination occurs about two weeks after getting the vaccination and lasts for about six months so lately we have seen that there is a longer stretch of the influenza season leading further into the spring than normal so certainly this year I would continue to advise at this point time to get it in say late late October early November but the main

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point here is also if you're otherwise seeing your physicians we never want to miss an opportunity opportunity to vaccinate and certainly it's greater now with all of the private clinics and the pharmacies able to give influenza vaccine but I don't think that you need to wait any later I still think October to early November is a good time to get it and right now there is no FDA recommendation or getting a booster influenza vaccination and that is a question that comes up regularly that

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has been studied and continues to be studied and we you know the people doing those clinical trials and looking at that will continue to evaluate that and giving giving an adequate answer but right now there's no need for booster for influenza vaccines I'm just curious no one is written this but do you think that because of all the social distancing we're doing and the attention to wearing masks and Hanan ties in our sand hands is that going to make flu season better this year maybe

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yeah you know I think they saw a little bit of improvement in influenza rates in a couple agen studies no I don't remember exactly which which countries however we are hopeful that continuing to do all these things to help mitigate coronavirus infection and spread will also be very effective in helping reduce the common cold the common coronaviruses Rhino virus meta Numa virus is all those types of mild cold illnesses but also

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influenza so you know that may be a silver lining we are really optimistic that that will happen this year as well gene wants to know he apparently knows somebody who's going to a wedding in Wichita and he wants to know even though that person is going to wear a mask he's not confident everyone else that the wedding is going to be appropriate it is an outdoor wedding his question is do I say still socially distance from that person going to the wedding when they return for two weeks

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you know I think continuing physical distancing as much as possible is is the best thing obviously if they live in your household that's a very difficult thing right now in Kansas there's no mandate or restrictions on in-state travel so I don't necessarily know that that you have to do that certainly be aware however after the patient the person comes back and see if they have been contacted that there's any new cases or any cases that have sprung up from that gathering itself but otherwise

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just continue to use your best judgment if you can say physically distance from that person or interactions outside that is probably best but that's in general what we would recommend for really anybody who's traveling are going to be at any gathering certainly I think that being outdoors is going to help a lot I don't know what the reception situation will be but in answer to the question just continue to do what you would do if you can't physically distance that great that's great obviously if they are in the household that's going to be a

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little bit more difficult Donna wants to know has there been any discussion about reporting numbers and more categories than just positive and specifically what she's asking how difficult would it be to report total new positives or positives without symptoms or do we have any data on percentages of that you know other than the large studies that have been published you know to answer her question directly about patients who are

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having are positive about symptoms you know unless there's widespread testing or everybody getting tested once a week or every day or every few days it's hard to know certainly in places congregate living like the prisons like nursing homes where there's outbreaks where there is contact tracing and testing being done on a regular basis we can really understand the numbers that are testing positive that are asymptomatic but again are they just asymptomatic at the time of testing and are really

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pre-symptomatic so that you know five or six seven days down the line they'll have symptoms that is something you have to retrospectively look at as you go back in time to look at all that information himself sometimes that can be done especially in the context of a research study but in general in real time that's probably a little bit more difficult to do just because of the reasons that I've talked about alright I got two or three more questions for you then we're going to talk with our guests in here check on Jessica and you'd be thinking about your final thoughts but first Cindy wants to

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know she says I have lupus and I have a wedding in Wichita on July 4th and I'd really like to go back to my water aerobics class I'm a little scared of both yeah yeah you know again difficult situation we we come in that was run by us you know I think the wedding is we had talked about before in the earlier scenario if you can do a wedding outside if you could physically distance obviously wearing a mask is gonna be very important we would recommend that

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you have to look at that situation the reception whether it's indoors or whether it's outdoors that's important can you continue to be physically distanced from other people because that is really the main gist in the main points of all of our talks is the physically distance wearing the mask and doing the hand hygiene the water aerobics I think that will be you know possibly a little bit more dangerous depending on if that's taking place inside versus outside again we have never really been worried about

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the virus if it goes into the pool or it goes into the lake or the ocean it's really the proximity to other people and the closeness for a certain amount of time that can spread the disease if you can go to a pool especially if it's outdoors and you can be doing water aerobics and you guys are six eight ten feet away from each other and that can be done safely I think that's certainly a reasonable thing to do Linda wants to know about blood types and this accessibility does it does a blood type make it more system or susceptible to

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kovat yeah that's a good question you know I anticipated this question a week ago there was certainly a large genetic study where a group from Italy look I think it was Italy and in a couple other different European countries looked at patients who were severely ill in the hospital who were otherwise in the hospital and he'll needing just oxygen and that ventilatory support and they ran it through a large genome database and what they found was that

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there's a possible association at an area where the blood type is on the genome and this was more for patients who were severely ill on the ventilator compared to patients who had Co vyd compared to patients who didn't have COBIT and there was a skew towards I believe it was Type O or type a I don't remember exactly but in those severely ill patients they did see a skew towards one blood type however when they also in

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the same paper and the results when they looked at patients who just required oxygen there was no difference in blood type and so this is a very good observation I think more studies need to be done but we have to remember that be the locus that this blood type gene is located on there's also other genes really close to it and next to it that deal with immune function as well so I don't think this paper or this result really gives anybody the license to go out and and not do the things that we've talked about physical distance masks

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hand hygiene not touching the face it's a good observation I think it lends to more more studies but again there were still patients in the hospital that had the same blood type as everybody else who were still requiring oxygen and who were very sick so I don't think you know that paper in itself really just allows you to go out and not do the things that we've talked about because everybody is still susceptible and as we get further into this we'll learn more about that but it's an interesting observation but I don't think it will change our

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practice in any way you and I have talked about this before when we'd not not been broadcasting that this is how we learn in a medical community these studies is kind of a compilation and we're going to know a lot more when we clear this than many years down the road is that isn't that true yeah absolutely in one study does make guidelines so we need to continue to assimilate and collect all the data that we can this is very new you know we

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understand that research papers come out every day but unfortunately in the time of kovat we've also seen that a lot of the research is being retracted for one reason or another either the data wasn't valid or the way that they processed the data was valid so we need to continue to do this methodically and really look at everything and study it prior to kovat that could be done regularly it could be very well peer-reviewed and could be debated upon to really come to the best conclusion

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but now we are trying to find so much data so quickly to try to get a published for for knowledge for the world to really overcome kovat that sometimes some things get overlooked and so we need to continue to get the data out that's fine but continue to review it and really validate what is what are the true results or what are the true data and what is it telling us we have lots of questions I just can't thank you and that's in the community for watching and asking I want to commend you the

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questions are really good you ask really really good questions and it's information that people need to know and because of that we want to let you know that every question we don't get to during the week I'm keeping track and we're going to try to go through those on Fridays we're just going to dedicate that time to Friday's Monday through Thursday we will also always introduce the topic like we did today with Colette and with Jason but I just wanted you know we are going to get to your questions and so please watch on Fridays

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or check back and look at the at the tape or not the tape but look at the the feed on Facebook at a later time if you miss them as we as we leave you dr. Hawkinson in beautiful Colorado with the birds chirping in the Sun what are your final thoughts yeah you know a couple weeks ago we were concerned about the parties of the lake of the ozarks the reopening we had initially said you know even eight to ten weeks ago that a

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surge would come probably two weeks after that around the time of Morey Memorial Day we had figured well we actually think the search comes later four or five six weeks out from those events and from reopening and that's really what we think we are seeing now around the nation as well as locally so I think we need to continue to reinforce the fact that the virus is out there in the nation the virus is local in Kansas City we need to continue to do those things

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this weekend and beyond that help reduce the spread and it's really up to every individual to do those continue to physical distance be outside if you can wearing your mask to help protect other people in case you do have the disease the mask may also offer you a little bit protection use hand hygiene frequently and try not to touch your face as much as possible especially to manipulate your mask so I think those are the things to remember as we move into the weekend and beyond

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oh and kudos to Colorado - you said that they had a really good overall practice of wearing their Mascis masks right yeah you know in the places that we've been there is an excellent mask and hand sanitizing culture all the restaurants if you can't be inside certainly need to wear them all of the waitstaff and all the people in the shops and the restaurants are wearing masks there's hand sanitizer available it's a very good culture I think we need to continue

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to make that culture shift continue to reinforce our points because moving forward koba's gonna be here it's not just gonna go away hopefully we can get you know really effective treatment and vaccinations but right now it's not there we all want to get back out to concerts to sporting events and so the way moving forward is really to continue to protect ourselves and by doing those things to protect ourselves we're also going to be protecting other people all right thank you as always we appreciate

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it and we will check with you and hear from you from Colorado tomorrow okay yeah yeah all right I see then all right back here in the studio I want to turn to you Jason and ask you what makes you most proud about telehealth what do you want people in the community to know about telehealth and in how is it helping at a time of kovat yeah thank you great question I love that question because I sense kovat have used telehealth myself to connect with my physician for a number of reasons it has

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allowed us to you know physically distance you know it has allowed us to not put patients in closed areas you know a lot of patients are worried about just even getting in their car and coming to the hospital when they realize after their encounter they just had a conversation with their physician you know we have had almost 80,000 visits in the last three months specifically just for telehealth telemedicine and that is an amazing number I have was on a call yesterday with health system in

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Minneapolis Washington State as well as New York and they are asking questions of us how would we do it how did we get this done so fast I'm having many conversations our providers here in the organization and they absolutely love it we seeing our patient satisfaction scores go up with patients just really pleased with the encounter that they're having your I encourage everyone I've gone through it so I've seen the fruits of the labor of the work that we've done and and I just really think that this is something that we're gonna be going with forward for

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for quite a long time I think it's here to stay and I encourage everyone who's afraid who hasn't who's been putting things off to reach out to their care provider and see if they can do something initially with tella telemedicine telehealth through video through chat through phone call and just start the conversation again with getting back to see your provider well and I know the other added benefit too for here or any healthcare place across the Metro and Greater Kansas is with the telehealth in it

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makes less population or footprint for those people who need to come on campus and they can and it enables us to socially distance and direct room and I think we're finding that we've talked with the this chief medical officers and other hospitals across the Metro and so it's really very kismet it is you know we're seeing patients you know who have normally a four-hour drive who don't have to do that for for their care and you know on average we were seeing you know around 2,000 patients today through

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telemedicine that number has continued to stay strong in our organization so I think physicians have really taken to it and realize they can give great medicine through video as well as through audio that we weren't doing you know prior to code and it leaves a lot of room in these clinics for people that need to come in and have a doctor absolutely hands on you're exactly right that's exactly right alright Jason so thank you so much for taking time we're really busy call it what is the most frequent question that your team is getting as it

39:04

relates to kovat I think two things one is it card and again like like we have talked about for years Jill get to know your insurance policy you own that policy you know call your call your insurance provider check with your employer make sure that you understand your benefits and I think the other one is what are my options you know I need help what are my options call us we're here we're here to help you in any way that we can and and to understand that you may just be in a whole different place today than you are

39:35

even a week ago so I think that's the other quote the other question we get a lot is how can you help me yeah and know that we're here to help I know that with kovat a lot of times when a trip to the emergency room happens it is emergent and people need help and they don't always have a chance to pick which emergency room they that they want to go to but in a time of kovat knowing which emergency room is in your network is probably a good thing to know yeah absolutely helps you make great choices it does help you make great choices when

40:06

you're not in a panic exactly right okay thank you we appreciate you being here too before we go I want to check in with Jessica level to see if she's earned her Nutter Butter cookie yet I think that that there she is she's still I bet you haven't had your blood drawn yet it can't be that fast is it nothing I'm great I actually did I just had my finger pricked and I answered some questions and there I'm just about ready

40:36

to walk over and get my blood drawn they reminded me that I haven't had my blood drawn since I was in high school so I need to be I need to be doing this what is it every every fifty-six every 56 days you can donate blood and so and so this is such a great opportunity for you to give back to the community and most importantly Jill it's safe I feel safer here that I do go to a grocery store so this has just been a really great experience it's quick everybody's super friendly everybody's doing all the things they're supposed to be doing social distancing wearing the masks

41:09

spaced-out you can see over here folks are already starting to come in and give blood and so I'm about ready to go to go get this get this party started I'm going to check back with you here in a little bit so yeah I'll get some cookies and I'll see in the office alright yeah we'll welcome you back all right yeah I think I'm gonna try to go maybe tomorrow and the the blood drive here on can this is through Friday I believe I don't know if we have the graphic there are

41:40

some other okay but that was conferences that her are not used conferences are gonna be happening I can't get high and from other places I think we still have just kind of talking to so but you can see where where those who are on the screen and and we hope that you have an opportunity to either become a first-time blood give a be a first-time blood donor or go and repeat and do it it's safe to do it and that's what we gonna do tomorrow I want to let you know

42:11

that our topic that we'll be talking about kind of a serious one when we had to postpone procedures and surgeries in order to conserve our PPE that left a lot of people in pain and we're going to be joined by dr. da would say ed who is going to talk about some perhaps unintended consequences and concern around opioids and we're also going to be joined by the chair of ortho surgery dr. Bruce Toby who's going to talk about different

42:42

things that they are doing to try to help people not be in pain get back to the o.r safely and how they're keeping an eye on the opioids and their use most importantly I hope dr. Stites is back tomorrow I think I see him waving yes if you want to come on and say hello to your people I know that that they miss you and we appreciate it and sometimes these things happen you want to come and just give your final thoughts and I will

43:10

relinquish the chair discussion and I apologize because you know what I wanted to hear it I thought I'd be learning a bunch of stuff so anyway Colette Jason thank you for being there Jill thanks for subbing especially at the last minute sometimes that happens what a big day you know I was looking at some information today and I know you guys have probably hit this I know Dana will probably say it dan you look like you're closer to Kansas cuz the land looks flatter

43:45

yeah yeah you got your case shirt on but the you know just just man social responsibility the numbers continue to go up across the country we don't want you to have to pay for Kovac care because we don't want you to get sick and then waiting to stay sick is to stay safe and the way you stay safe is make sure you've followed those pillars of infection control because whether you're in Colorado I'm going next week brother or you're right here in Kansas City there's still no place like home so stay safe we'll be back tomorrow we'll see

44:17

you then

Wednesday Media Briefing on COVID-19

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