US intelligence agencies started tracking coronavirus outbreak in China as early as November

(CNN)US spy agencies were tracking the rise of the novel coronavirus as early as November, weeks before that information was included in President Donald Trump's daily intelligence briefing, a former US military official told CNN. While the exact date of the first report remains unclear, sources told CNN that intelligence gathered in November and in the weeks following offered multiple early warnings about the potential severity of the pandemic now surging in the US. Intelligence is often only elevated to the highest levels of the government once analysts and officials reach a certain threshold of confidence in their assessment. That day came on January 3, the first day the President's daily briefing included information the US intelligence community had gathered about the contagion in China and the potential it had to spread, including to the US, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Coronavirus Live Updates: Additional Aid Stalls in Senate; New York Hospitalizations Slow

A Trump administration request for $250 billion in relief for small businesses stalled in the Senate. A Trump administration request for quick approval of $250 billion to replenish a new loan program for distressed small businesses stalled in the Senate on Thursday morning after Republicans and Democrats clashed over what should be included. With Congress in recess and lawmakers scattered around the country, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, attempted to push through the small business loan funding during a procedural session, a maneuver that would have required all senators to agree.

How COVID-19 is impacting hospitals' IT purchasing decisions

The coronavirus pandemic is throwing a new factor into hospitals' calculations about how to proceed with current and future healthcare IT implementations. As provider organizations face a surge of new cases, or anticipate capacity challenges in the near future, they're reconsidering the speed with which they can conduct current implementations because of limitations in IT-staff capacity and the heavy demands that high patient loads are placing on clinical staff. Looking ahead, some providers also may see future implementation efforts delayed because organizations lack the bandwidth now to support the often long and arduous process of making future purchases. However, some forms of technology – particularly those that support telehealth services – are in hot demand as they prove their worth during the national pandemic, say experts who assess information technology adoption by the nation's healthcare providers. Organizations also are looking to quickly access and use features of their current IT to enable them to better cope with the crisis.

Premier, Resilinc launch online exchange to track medical supply during COVID-19 crisis

With growing concern of shortages for personal protective equipment and other supplies amid the coronavirus pandemic, Premier has teamed up with supply chain mapping and disruption monitoring services specialist Resilinc to launch an exchange to locate and trade critical supplies. The cloud-based platform, developed in collaboration with Stanford Medicine and called The Exchange, allows hospitals and frontline healthcare providers to submit requests for specific items and be matched with peer organizations who can provide the needed supplies. The tool can expedite communications between thousands of networked hospitals and help place critical medical supplies where they are needed most. "Many hospitals searching for items that are on allocation by suppliers must manually locate other hospitals who have inventory," Bindiya Vakil, CEO and founder of Resilinc, said in a statement. "This can be time consuming, less successful and has a narrow geographic reach."

Survey: Americans’ perceptions of telehealth in the COVID-19 era

Global Edition Telehealth Survey: Americans’ perceptions of telehealth in the COVID-19 era Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they’d consider using telehealth to be remotely screened for COVID-19, and two-thirds said the pandemic has increased their willingness to try virtual care the Clearlink survey found. By Bill SiwickiApril 03, 202012:09 PM Survey: Americans’ perceptions of telehealth in the COVID-19 era The rapid spread of coronavirus COVID-19 is taxing traditional methods of healthcare delivery. The sheer number of suspected cases of the virus, the pace at which it is spreading, and the desire to have as many people as possible practice social distancing or shelter-in-place have made it more challenging for individuals to receive care in a traditional, in-person setting. Telehealth technology, originally designed to give access to care in areas where there is a shortage of specialty care providers, now is being used much more widely as a way to screen and diagnose patients without risking the spread of disease through personal contact. But if health IT professionals have long been accustomed to notion of telehealth and virtual care, even if they haven’t deployed the technologies themselves, what do healthcare consumers think of this emerging new way of engaging with their care providers?

Telehealth vendors scramble to hire doctors as patient volume soars amid COVID-19

Telehealth vendors are scrambling to hire doctors and get them onboarded as soon as possible to meet skyrocketing patient demand as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the U.S. "The big challenge we have right now is there's a need to get as many providers on our platform as quickly as possible so we're able to meet that surging demand," Ross Friedberg, chief legal and business affairs officer at Doctor on Demand, told Healthcare Dive. San Francisco-based Doctor on Demand is aggressively recruiting, Friedberg said, and "rapidly increasing" its number of providers daily, though the company declined to share more specific figures. Mobile app-based vendor 98point6, which licenses its physicians in all 50 states, is bringing on short-term physicians to help with the recent dramatic increase in patient volume. Over the next month, the startup expects to triple the number of doctors working at 98point6.

As Congress gains ground on stimulus, healthcare workers ask people to stay home

Healthcare providers pleaded with the American public Tuesday to stay home in an attempt to limit spread of the novel coronavirus. But the remarks were in stark contrast to President Donald Trump, who said he wanted the nation to be "opened up" by Easter — April 12 — despite strong advice from public health experts that the U.S. continue social distancing efforts. Congress, meanwhile, reached a deal on stimulus legislation that Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said includes $130 billion for the healthcare system "to be injected right away to help with the shortage of ventilators, equipment and other things as well as whatever else they need." The American Hospital Association had asked for at least $100 billion to increase surge capacity through alternate care sites.