It's more common for people in rural areas to die earlier than urban residents from things like heart disease, cancer and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But hospitals have closed throughout rural America in the last decade, leaving some of the 46 million people who live in these areas fewer options to get the care they need when they need it.
Hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who required intensive care unit (ICU) treatment were more likely to acquire infections than those hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study in Scientific Reports.
In research recently published in Nature Medicine, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Jianxi Gao, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, and his team measured the resilience and adaptability of our health care system to disruptions caused by COVID-19. Resilience is a system's ability to absorb and recover from disruptions. Adaptability is a system's ability to learn from previous disturbances where there are recurrent disruptions. ...
"We found that our health care systems in the United States exhibit substantial adaptability, but only a moderate level of resilience," said Gao. "Our findings can inform the design of resilient and sustainable health care systems to prepare for future disruptions, whether they are caused by pandemics, climate change, conflicts, or anything else."
As of July 5, the seven-day “moving average” of emergency room patients diagnosed with COVID in Florida has risen to 3%, putting the state just behind Hawaii for the highest percent of ER patients testing positive for the disease, CDC data show. A moving average is a way to look at trends over time by averaging data across a seven-day period. Hawaii leads the nation, with a seven-day moving average of slightly more than 4% for ER patients testing positive for COVID.