The Capital Medical Society Foundation recently distributed $5,000 grants to three Tallahassee organizations to improve access to health care. Big Bend Hospice, Elder Care Services, and Lighthouse of the Big Bend all received checks in June to help their clients with health care needs.

The Capital Medical Society Nominating Committee will be convening in the coming months to consider nominations for the CMS Board of Governors and for the CMS FMA Delegation. If you are interested in being considered for nomination to the CMS Board of Governors or to serve as a CMS FMA Delegate, please complete the form (https://capmed.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-Succession-Planning-Questionnaire.pdf) and mail to Pam Irwin at:

A child younger than 5 has died of COVID-19 at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare — the first child to die there of the disease, the hospital confirmed Thursday.

The child died within the past month, TMH pediatricians revealed Thursday. Four children are currently hospitalized for the infection, including one child younger than 5 and second child between 5 and 12.

Sources tell Florida Politics it is a 14-month-old who specifically died at TMH. The hospital would not confirm this detail.

Local school officials in Florida continue to grapple with implementing student mask policies as the school year begins this week in many counties.

And as school districts navigate a requirement that parents be able to opt out of mask mandates for their children, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday announced that the state Board of Education could withhold pay from superintendents and school board members who don't comply.

The most vulnerable Americans may receive booster shots soon, after studies show they may not have had an adequate immune response to just two doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

“An additional dose could help increase protection for these individuals,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a Thursday White House Briefing.

After weeks of speculation, the FDA amended the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines to include an additional booster dose for certain immunocompromised people, the agency said late Thursday.

These populations include solid-organ transplant recipients or others diagnosed with conditions "considered to have a similar level of immunocompromise" who previously received one of the two mRNA vaccines. The FDA kept the language purposely vague, as clinical considerations are set to be defined Friday during CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that the state is launching a rapid response unit to expand the use of monoclonal antibodies to relieve pressure at hospitals that continue to report a rise in COVID-19 patients.

DeSantis said the drugs, made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, are for people who are at high risk of severe COVID-19. The governor cautioned people not to wait too long because the drugs are more effective when symptoms are still mild.

A report released Thursday by AARP shows that Florida had the nation’s highest percentage of nursing homes reporting new COVID-19 infections among staff members during a four-week period in June and July.

The Florida facilities also had the second-lowest worker vaccination rate in the nation.

Given the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, many are asking why people would be hesitant to be vaccinated against it. That's the question that bounces around the skulls of countless physicians, public health experts, journalists, politicians, and others. But before trying to answer the question, it might be reasonable to ask why people do, or fail to do, other things that negatively affect their health.

The Florida Department of Health said late Monday that federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data overstated daily case counts from the weekend, numbers that would have given the state record tallies.

The health department, which no longer publishes daily numbers, tweeted that the correct daily case count on Friday was 21,500, Saturday's was 19,567 and Sunday's was 15,319.

The state agency said the three-day average is 18,795.

The University of South Florida has been selected as a site for a clinical trial testing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 10 years.

Researchers at USF Health's Morsani College of Medicine are seeking volunteers in the greater Tampa Bay region to participate in the study to evaluate safety and immune responses.

Florida hospitals are using “significant levels of oxygen” to treat an unprecedented number of COVID-19 patients, presenting a supply challenge complicated by a nationwide shortage of delivery drivers.

Hospital officials say their needs are being met, but the sky-high demand for medical oxygen is taxing the system.

People with previous COVID-19 infection had higher antibody levels after one dose of Pfizer vaccine compared with uninfected people after two doses, a small lab study of 59 people showed.

Not only that, but IgG levels did not increase after the second dose among those previously infected, which could indicate that one dose of vaccine may be sufficient for this population, reported James Moy, MD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and colleagues.

Baylor Scott & White Health sued former employee and cardiologist Peter McCullough, MD, last week, alleging that he illegitimately affiliated himself with its facilities when promoting controversial views about COVID-19.

Nearly 6 months after McCullough's employment had ended, he continued to use his former professional titles -- such as "vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center" -- in media interviews in which he spread his opinions about the pandemic, the lawsuit alleged.

The WHO's long-standing hemoglobin cutoffs for anemia do not match reality for people around the world, a cross-sectional study found.

Pooled fifth percentile estimates of hemoglobin were 9.65 g/dL for children and 10.81 g/dL for women across 27 nutrition surveys from 25 countries, with low inter-survey variance around these estimates, reported O. Yaw Addo, PhD, of the CDC and Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues.

In line with this finding, hemoglobin concentrations plotted against soluble transferrin receptor (a biomarker of tissue iron deficiency and a physiological indicator of erythropoiesis) reveal compensatory increased erythropoiesis when hemoglobin dips below 9.61 g/dL among children and 11.01 g/dL among women, they noted in JAMA Network Open.

For years, FDA has allowed the vast majority of e-cigarettes to stay on the market even though none of them have the premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) orders they need to be sold legally. But all that is changing. Following a court ruling, FDA must issue PMTA orders by September 9, pro or con, for every e-cigarette brand or variant that has applied to stay on the market and take any not receiving permissive orders off the market.

On April 5, 2021, a requirement of the 21st Century Cures Act went into effect: Patients must be able to access information in their EHRs “without delay.” (This requirement does not apply to paper records.) The Cures Act prohibition against information blocking, often referred to as an “open notes” provision, provides patients with transparency in the outcomes of their healthcare via convenient access to information in their EHR, which can positively or negatively impact the patient-doctor relationship.

Electronic Prescribing Requirements (Florida Board of Medicine)

Florida ePrescribing Clearinghouse (Agency for Healthcare Administration)

The purpose of the Florida ePrescribing Clearinghouse is to provide information that contributes to the promotion and implementation of electronic prescribing by health care practitioners, health care facilities, and pharmacies in order to prevent prescription drug abuse, improve patient safety, and reduce unnecessary prescriptions. This Clearinghouse contains information on the advantages, processes, products, rules, and laws of ePrescribing as well as Florida ePrescribing reports.

2. Call 850-645-0747 to purchase over the phone and mention the promo code "CMS"

To view Physician Wellness resources, click here.

The Elephant in the Doctors' Lounge - With roughly 156 million Americans fully vaccinated for COVID-19, physicians are seeing signs of relief on the horizon. That relief can't come soon enough. The initial energy and adrenaline that drove physicians to treat their acutely ill patients in the early months of the pandemic have been replaced by fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It's time to talk -- and to act -- so these feelings of struggle don't drive more of our colleagues into a mental health emergency.

Re-envisioning Elder Care - CME Opportunity (Open flyer)

All-day Virtual Conference

September 10, 2021

8:15 am - 3:45 pm

Wolfson Children’s Hospital is proud to provide Continuing Medical Education opportunities to our partners and referring providers by offering monthly virtual CME sessions at no cost. If you have missed any of our previously offered live webinars and still wish to obtain CME credit for them, we have provided 4 recorded webinars for a total of 5.5 CME credits possible. Please follow the instructions below in order to take advantage of this opportunity!

1.      Open the flyer and choose which education session you would like to watch.

2.      Click the link in the attachment for the desired education session.

4.      Follow the instructions included in the video description to complete the required survey and input the associated activity code.

*Please note, if you are licensed outside of the state of Florida, you must contact the CME office at [email protected] to request an official transcript of your participation.

FreeCME.com 

Diagnostic error continues to be a top patient safety concern, a global burden, and cause patient harm from treatment delay, testing, or misdiagnosis. “Prevention of Diagnostic Error in Primary Care” is an on-demand CME activity that features patient safety expert Jeffrey A. Gold, MD, professor of medicine, vice chair for quality and safety, for the department of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University. This program highlights major contributing factors of diagnostic error along with the diagnostic process of care framework with additional focus on strategies to mitigate risk of patient harm in the primary care setting.

TMH has a library of past CME courses for viewing on their MDnews page: https://www.tmh.org/mdnews/education. The recent CMEs cohosted by CMS and TMH may be found there or by opening: https://youtu.be/HJ50ZsIe2fc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjgnCn77HSc&t=5s.

The Capital Medical Society will publish its 2022 Membership Directory early next year. It will be distributed to all members. We have once again contracted with a company called E&M Consulting to produce the directory. E&M will be contacting our members over the next few months about advertising opportunities in the directory. E&M will manage all the ad sales, creative design, and formatting of the publication for us. This is a very professional group with experience in publishing association directories. If you have any questions or would like to advertise, please contact Rob Schmidt with E&M at 850-347-8182, 800-572-0011, or [email protected]. Information on the available advertising opportunities can be viewed here or can also be viewed online at https://www.emconsultinginc.com/adreservation/cms/. Please be responsive and help support this directory. Remember, it will include our entire medical community.  

Board-certified physicians are getting another extension on the deadline to maintain their internal medicine credentials.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) once again extended the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) requirements through December 2022.

The State-Level COVID-19 profile for Florida. This data is collected from medical facilities in one of two system HHS protect or National Healthcare Safety Network  

The New England Journal of Medicine - A collection of articles and other resources on the Coronavirus outbreak, including clinical reports, management guidelines, and commentary

From the American Medical Association: COVID-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) Resource Center for Physicians

From the Florida Medical Association: Coronavirus Educational Resource Center

FMA's Step-by-Step Guide to COVID-19 vaccine enrollment for Florida physicians (FMA) 

See the latest state Department of Health data summarizing the number of people in Florida who have either received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine or completed the vaccine series (FMA) 

Florida Department of Health's COVID Vaccines in Florida 

COVID-19 Pandemic Planning FAQ (dated 11/19/2020) includes important information regarding procurement and handling of costs for vaccine administration. (FEMA) 

What Happens Once There is a COVID-19 Vaccine? Key Challenges to Vaccinating America (12/3/2020) - VIDEO or SLIDES (Kaiser Family Foundation) 

Mandatory Reporting of COVID-19 Laboratory Test Results: Reporting of Cycle Threshold Values (December 3, 2020)

Notable recent additions to CDC guidance include more detailed infection prevention and control recommendations for health care settings: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/hcp/infection-control.html.

Please continue to closely monitor the CDC novel coronavirus website for situation and guidance updates. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html.

See Flyer 

Brochure & To Register 

Machine donations can be dropped off at Capital Medical Society Foundation's office at 1204 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308. Donations to Capital Medical Society Foundation are tax-deductible within IRS guidelines Federal Tax I.D. #: 59-2104510. For additional information, please call 942-5215 or email [email protected].

Click here to access AmazonSmile and support the CMS Foundation today!