A practicing radiologist and healthcare management expert is expecting an “explosion” of coronavirus cases in the coming weeks, and he admits “the numbers may look gruesome.”
Howard Forman—an MD and professor of radiology, biomedical imaging, economics and public health—recently shared his thoughts on the outbreak in an opinion piece published Sunday. He believes up to this point, the U.S. has struggled to get a handle on testing for the disease, and the Trump administration’s promises will barely make a dent.
“There is absolutely going to be an explosion in the number of identified cases. But how fast that number increases is highly dependent on how fast we can test,” Forman told Yale Insights in a piece published March 1. “As of today, we have done inadequate testing and today’s announcement of 15,000 kits ‘in the mail’ per the White House is woefully inadequate for a population that is rightfully concerned and a healthcare community that has too little useful information.”
He expects to see emergency departments, already taxed by the flu season, to get further slammed. And radiology may be stretched even thinner, as busy physicians are asked to step up and lend their knowledge in interpreting chest CT images.
He admits that the U.S. system has “limited capacity for extraordinary events. But disaster planning can help a lot here and most major institutions have plans for this.”
Furman’s main piece of advice for radiology business leaders and the rest of the field?
“People need to avoid panicking,” he told Yale Insights. “The numbers may look gruesome over the next week or so, but these are existing cases that are finally being diagnosed. Our public health and healthcare infrastructure is very strong but it will be tested. I am confident that through adequate detection, we will contain this.”
In the meantime, the American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association are urging Congress to “swiftly” provide $1 billion in extra funding to manage the outbreak. Such dollars would support the “urgent preparedness and response needs of hospitals, health systems, physicians and nurses on the front lines,” the groups wrote in a Feb. 27 letter. They’re asking that such supplemental funding does not takeaway dollars already going toward other health programs.
“We respectfully ask that Congress provide initial supplemental emergency funding of $1 billion during this critical window of time when we are able to best prepare and respond to this outbreak, recognizing that additional supplemental funding may be necessary as the situation evolves,” the groups wrote.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.