The NCGA House Health COVID-19 Working Group met on Thursday, May 14, 2020.

DHHS Update

Secretary Mandy Cohen, MD provided a COVID-19 overview. The NCDHHS case count can be found here.

As of May 13, 2020 there were

  • 5,859 NC Cases
  • 521 Hospitalizations
  • 210,457 Completed Tests
  • 597 Deaths
  • 99 NC Counties with Cases

Sec. Cohen noted that the coordinated action plan includes increasing the number of collection sites and working closely with Local Health Departments for county expertise.

The State will be distributing 1 million sets of PPE to over 3,000 facilities across NC including skilled nursing facilities, adult care homes, and group homes.

Sec. Cohen emphasized the importance of the 3 Ws:

  • WEAR a cloth face covering
  • WAIT 6 ft. apart
  • WASH your hands often or use hand sanitizer

NC HealthConnex

Christie Burris, Executive Director of the NC Health Information Exchange Authority provided an overview that over 55,000 providers have contributed records, with approximately 700k messages flowing into the system daily. There are over 9 million unique patient records.

Burris highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the systemic issues across the U.S. with clinical data sharing and the need for a comprehensive data sharing ecosystem.

She added that the NC*Notify option has been helpful to providers to receive alerts as their patients seek care. However, there are expansion opportunities to the system that could help the health care community live improving access to data for follow up like COVID-19 results, use of the HIE master patient repository for matching patients, enhancing logic for finding more cases and symptoms, integrating statewide surveillance systems, and publishing current dashboard for real time feedback of policy decisions.

NC Board of Nursing

Catherine Moore, PhD, RN, Regulatory Consultant for the NCBON suggested 3 main issues for the NCGA to consider:

  • Statutory authority for the creation of waivers
  • Organizational policies for nursing
  • Personal protection equipment

Home and Hospice Care

Representatives from the Association for Home & Hospice Care of NC informed the Committee that 86% of home and hospice agencies surveyed indicated difficulty in obtaining PPE. They also noted that the increased cost of PPE was a limitation.

They requested that the temporary Medicaid rate increases remain permanent through phase 2 of COVID-19. The current rate increases would only get most providers close to national averages in their service areas.

Assisted Living

The NC Assisted Living Association made the following suggestions for relief for their members:

  • Establishing a dedicated facility for COVID-19 residents
  • Funds for additional costs for these facilities
  • Funds to cover redesign of visitation areas to address isolation and maintain safety
  • Funds to purchase technology to improve communication and safety
  • Enhancing testing availability to include rapid test kits
  • Supplemental funds for hazard pay