The worldwide novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak continues to increase, triggering market downturns and heightened concerns from healthcare providers, public health officials and the general public. Epidemiologists are predicting the outbreak will increase and ultimately expose a significant portion of the US population to the virus.
As of March 6th, there are over 100K cases globally with 260 confirmed cases here in the US. School closings in Seattle and Westchester, where New York’s governor declared a “containment zone”. Meanwhile, businesses have begun to protect workers from exposure by limiting work travel and implementing “work from home” arrangements.
Significantly, the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) took the unprecedented step of canceling its annual 2020 conference, at which President Trump was scheduled to announce the release of the HHS interoperability final rule. Released Monday, the rule will have a sweeping impact on the healthcare IT industry and providers, including regulations governing patient access to health data and data blocking.
The CDC recommends that front-line healthcare personnel in the United States be prepared to evaluate patients for 2019-nCoV. NextGen® Enterprise supports documentation of contagion risk in our Contagion Exposure template. For more information, see the Contagion Exposure Risk User Guide.
NextGen Healthcare urges clients to stay safe and stay up to date on the latest information about signs and symptoms, diagnostic testing, and case definitions from CDC for 2019-nCoV disease.
NextGen® Enterprise supports documentation of contagion risk using the Contagion Exposure template. For more information, see the Contagion Exposure Risk User Guide.