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In this issue
- Important COVID Updates
- Clinical Integration Program Updates
- Best Wishes, Dr. Vince Bufalino
- Quality Reporting
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Wishing You Good Health This Holiday Season
As another extraordinary year comes to a close, we want to express our sincere gratitude for you and your staff. Through challenge after challenge, you kept the focus on our patients. You made sure they had access to safe, high quality care, which is so important when people were hesitant to seek care. You kept your team and your patients safe by supporting COVID vaccination. You remained steady and focused on delivering top health outcomes and managing costs, even as the world around us felt (and still feels) like chaos. You have given so much, and we are so grateful for your partnership. We hope you can spend time over the holidays in ways that you bring you joy and renewal.
Wishing you good health,
Gary, Don and Carrie
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No Visitor Policy in EDs effective Dec. 27: To help limit the spread of the virus, as volumes in our Emergency Department (ED) waiting rooms continue to grow, we’re updating our ED Visitor Policy. Effective Dec. 27, there will be no visitors allowed for adult patients in the ED. Visitors who don’t meet exception criteria for the ED may wait in designated hospital areas if there is ample space for social distancing. Pediatric ED patients will still be allowed two designated visitors. As a reminder, the rest of the hospital and our outpatient locations are still under the Limited Visitor Policy, which allows two designated visitors, with one visitor in the patient’s room at a time for non-COVID-19 patients helping limit crowding and social distancing issues within the hospital waiting areas.
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Pausing monoclonal antibody infusions: Effective Dec. 23, we are pausing all monoclonal antibody (MAB) infusion treatments at Advocate Aurora, including currently scheduled patients. A steering team of physician leaders, pharmacy and ethics made this decision based on new data that currently available MAB infusions are not effective against the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, which is now estimated to be causing > 90% of cases in our area. We will revisit MAB infusions when we receive supply of sotrovimab, which is predicted to be more active against the Omicron variant. We anticipate receiving sotrovimab the week of Jan. 3 and will share more details on administration guidelines and available supply at that time. We will keep you informed on this evolving situation. Contact your Pharmacy leader with questions.
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Patient education on Ivermectin: With continued news coverage and public interest in Ivermectin, you are likely still fielding questions from patients in your offices. As a reminder, Advocate Aurora Health continues to follow FDA and CDC guidance and evidence-based prescribing practices in not supporting ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19. We’ve developed this fact sheet that may be shared with patients who have questions about ivermectin and our position on its use.
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Johnson & Johnson vaccinations paused: Out of an abundance of caution, last week we paused administration of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine following the CDC’s recommendation of the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna vaccines over J&J. We've launched multi-channel communications with our patients regarding this topic. While rare, medical staff and team members who received the J&J vaccine within the last three weeks and are experiencing symptoms (severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, shortness of breath) should contact their health care provider and Employee Health.
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Reminder on elective surgeries/procedures: As Advocate hospitals continue to face staffing and capacity challenges, each site is managing their procedural/surgical volume. Local surgical governing councils are meeting regularly, utilizing SWAPS criteria and staffing matrices, when necessary, to determine prioritization of elective inpatient admission cases.
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First oral treatment for COVID-19 receives FDA EUA: Pfizer’s Paxlovid, an oral pill for the treatment of COVID-19, received emergency use authorization from the FDA on Dec. 22. At this time, there is insufficient information on this drug’s distribution from the states of WI and IL. Pharmacy and clinical leaders are discussing the use and distribution of Paxlovid and will share updates as they are available.
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Clinical Integration Program
2022 program overview: Check out what you need to know.
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Best Wishes, Dr. Vince Bufalino
After more than 40 years as a cardiologist and health care administrator, Vince Bufalino, MD will retire at the end this month from his role as Chief Medical Group Officer with Advocate Aurora Health's medical group. Jeff Bahr, MD will continue as the sole leader in this role. Dr. Bufalino has been an active member of APP both as a physician and a leader for many years, first as an aligned physician with Midwest Heart Specialists and later with Advocate Medical Group. Dr. Bufalino has made significant contributions to the medical field, Advocate Aurora Health and his community. We wish him the best on his well-earned retirement. Read more.
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Driving Success
2021 MSSP Quality Reporting: Through the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), our ACO must accurately report quality data each year to CMS. This information is used to calculate our overall MSSP performance and is tied to our shared savings and Advanced APM/MACRA lump sum bonus. APP aligned practices in our MSSP ACO are required to participate in reporting and can anticipate outreach from the APP Quality Improvement team via fax around mid-January to collect data on patients/measures sampled for 2021 reporting. Please do your best to quickly respond to these requests so we can be sure to secure the maximum score and therefore payment for APP physicians.
Annual NCQA HEDIS Quality Compliance Audits: The annual NCQA HEDIS Compliance Audit indicates whether an organization has the foundation for accurate quality performance measurement. Anticipate outreach from APP Quality Improvement February to March 2022 on a sample of our members for medical record collection and submission to NCQA. Turnaround time for this audit is very limited and a prompt response is critical for success.
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Supporting Your Practice
ALT and HDL reagent shortages: If your practice uses ACL for lab tests, please review this important update. Among the nationwide shortages impacting health care systems, ACL anticipates back orders of the reagents ALT (alanine transaminase) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein) will impact most sites within the Advocate Aurora Health system starting Dec. 22. Read more.
EpicCare Link Site Verification: The Advocate Aurora Health quarterly site verification for ECL access will begin as scheduled on Jan. 1, 2022. This will kick off the 14 day window for sites to verify their lists of users and providers are accurate. If these are not verified on Jan. 15, the site will be blocked. As a reminder, the ECL team will not verify a site or exclude a group from this review. Be sure to designate someone to complete this in the case your established site administrator is not available during this timeframe.
CMS Reminder - Update your NPI record by Dec. 31: CMS regulations included in the 21st Century Cures Act and the 2020 Promoting Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule require physicians and APCs to update their NPI records with their Direct Address and digital endpoint contact in the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES). An email outlining this CMS requirement was sent on Dec. 17 with your specific Epic direct address. View here. Questions should be sent to AMG-PayerActivation@aah.org.
POLST Illinois update: Legislative changes are effective Jan. 1, 2022. See SBAR. A revised POLST form is not yet available from IDPH; in the meantime you should continue to use the existing form and continue to include witness signature. Expect further updates upon release of the new form.
VPN access clarification: For VPN access, non-employed physician accounts are inactivated if they don’t log in within a 180-day timeframe. Please contact the Advocate Aurora Service Desk with any questions: 630-990-7000.
Please click “read more” for additional important updates:
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Continuing Medical Education
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CME Website: Webinars & Recordings
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