covid – Awaken

September 23, 2022October 19, 2022

Playing God: Making the Impossible Choices

Charlotte Robinson, Wake Forest University School of Law JD ’22

The room feels darker than most. It is cold and uninviting. For someone who works in a hospital, you’d think I would be used to this environment. I should have adapted to it. After all, no one has ever described a hospital as sunny and welcoming. I look around the waiting room of the psychology wing, taking in all the textbooks and self-help books, stewing. As I wait, I can hear every beat of my heart. My ears feel muffled, like when you swim underwater. I finally understand how patients must feel waiting for their doctor to show. Why make an appointment if you can’t commit to the time you offered? The door to her office creaks open, and I hear the small click-click of the doctor’s heels as she walks out to grab me. We walk the three feet back into her office. It’s even darker than the waiting room. Dr. Markin sits down at her desk and opens a folder. It’s thick. I know it’s my patient master file – a simple manilla folder than contains all my patients and their stories. For such a simple folder, it’s mere presence makes me nauseous.

November 5, 2020November 5, 2020

Let’s Continue to Reap the Benefits of Telehealth After the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

by James Hughes, WFU JD Candidate ’22

Due to the infectious nature of COVID-19, our health care system has been forced to evolve in order to appropriately serve patients during this deadly pandemic. Before the public health emergency, roughly 13,000 Medicare beneficiaries received fee-for-service telehealth services per week, while almost 1.7 million Medicare beneficiaries utilized telehealth services in the last week of April, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) data. Further, telehealth coverage should be a permanent fixture in our health care system, and the federal government should support telehealth coverage beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Before the public health emergency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) did not provide Medicare reimbursements for audio-visual telehealth visits unless the patient lived in a qualified rural area or was within the confines of certain medical facilities. Reimbursement has historically been the primary obstacle to telehealth services. The Telehealth Services During Certain Emergency Periods Act of 2020 allowed for HHS to modify or waive rules for telehealth under Medicare during the public health emergency, and recently, the American Medical Association asked President Trump, HHS, and Congress to extend some of the telehealth policies used during COVID-19 beyond this public health emergency.

October 12, 2020

The Disproportionate Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Black Americans

by Madison Woschkolup, WFU JD Candidate ’21

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States is immense, but this impact has been disproportionately felt by Black communities. In thirty-three states and the District of Columbia, Black people comprise a higher proportion of COVID-19 cases relative to the percentage of the state’s population they make up.[1] In Maine, for example, Black people account for 21% of the state’s total COVID cases, even though only 1% of the state’s total population is Black.[2] In comparison, in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, the percentage of each state’s total COVID cases attributable to white people remains well below the relative percentage of white people in the state. This state-by-state trend extends nationally as well. As of June 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 21.8% of COVID-19 cases in the United States were Black individuals, despite the fact that this group only represents 13% of the total population.

It is widely recognized that health outcomes of communities of color are objectively worse than those of white communities.[3] In addition to experiencing an increased risk of contracting the virus, Black Americans are also experiencing the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide, more than double the mortality rate of their white counterparts.[4] As of August, 1 in 1,125 Black Americans has died from COVID-19, or 88.4 deaths per 100,000.[5] For perspective, the mortality rate for white Americans was 40.4 deaths per 100,000.[6] This gap only increases when the data are adjusted for age differences within the race groups.[7]

September 18, 2020

The Disproportionate Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Black Americans

By Madison Woschkolup

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States is immense, but this impact has been disproportionately felt by Black communities. In thirty-three states and the District of Columbia, Black people comprise a higher proportion of COVID-19 cases relative to the percentage of the state’s population they make up. In addition to experiencing an increased risk of contracting the virus, Black Americans are also experiencing the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide, more than double the mortality rate of their white counterparts. As of August, 1 in 1,125 Black Americans has died from COVID-19, or 88.4 deaths per 100,000. For perspective, the mortality rate for white Americans was 40.4 deaths per 100,000. The pandemic has exposed, and exacerbated long-standing inequalities present in the United States.