In the latest entry in our series examining PACE’s Covid-19 response, we share our findings regarding virtual care delivery successes and barriers at six PACE sites across the country. We also make the case for building a stronger evidence base to guide the future integration of virtual services in a program known for its human touch.

As part of our Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded evaluation of PACE’s Covid-19 adaptions, we spoke with PACE administrators in six states. They shared how they crafted innovative solutions to meet both the physical and emotional needs of participants, families, and staff in a changing and challenging health landscape. 

Altarum social psychologist Christine Stanik writes how limited data to inform policy and practice of PACE has hindered wider expansion of the eldercare model. Now a new funding opportunity from AHRQ has opened the door for Altarum to conduct the most thorough analysis of PACE innovations to date.

While parts of the health system are stretched to the breaking point, the business of routine health care is shut down like the rest of the economy, and providers are facing unprecedented financial losses.

Today’s jobs report begins to reveal the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment. More than 700,000 jobs were lost since February.

For the first year since at least 1960 – when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began tracking national health expenditures – total health spending in 2020 was less than in the previous year. 

The rapid decline and subsequent rebound in the use of health care services and associated health spending in the U.S. as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented. Spending on PHC from September 2020 through February 2021 has averaged nearly 0.5% below the same period the year before, suggesting that the pace of the recovery in spending has stalled, at least temporarily.

Health care jobs have begun to return, starting with the outpatient settings that were most impacted by the Covid-19 shutdown.

With yesterday’s release of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) data for the second quarter of 2020, dire economic anxieties were confirmed as we saw the worst reading in the series’ history (which goes back to 1947): a drop of 32.9% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate.

The dramatic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic recession on health care utilization, spending, and employment have been well-explored by experts tracking the US health sector. In this blog we summarize some of our recent findings on health sector price growth, using data from our Health Sector Economic Indicators (HSEI) through March 2021, focusing on changes in price trends just before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.