Permanently remove telehealth barriers
I am a nurse practitioner who specializes in treating older adults with mental health and cognitive disorders at Northern Light Acadia Hospital’s Mood and Memory Clinic.
For years, we have wanted to expand telehealth video conferencing services for our patients who frequently travel long distances to see us or who simply have difficulty getting out of their home. Historically, many of our patients reside in the greater Bangor area yet we continue to see more patients who travel from all corners of the state to seek our services.
While the telehealth video conferencing service has expanded in the last few years with the support of expanded MaineCare telehealth benefit and a new law that requires commercial payer parity for telehealth services, Medicare is a challenge. Medicare telehealth regulation requires many patients in Penobscot and Cumberland counties to be transported to appointments for an in-person visit with their healthcare provider. But then came COVID-19.
Emergency waivers at the federal and state level removed many of the barriers to telehealth visits. In just a week, our clinic at Northern Light Acadia Hospital went from a busy in-person, outpatient practice to a busy telehealth video conferencing practice.
While these changes are temporary, I hope that Medicare policy makers see the benefit to patients of expanding telehealth video conferencing services permanently.
May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and I am reminded that while there are advantages to an in-person health visit, technology allows us to expand access to critically needed services. We have an obligation to take care of our most vulnerable patients in Maine and use of this technology should remain a part of our healthcare delivery long after we emerge from the wake of COVID-19.
Joshua Bridges
Bangor
A bad look for us restaurant owners
As a restaurant owner and businessman of 25 years in Maine, who is well known and active in the industry, I want to go on the record for stating that Rick Savage at the Sunday River Brewing Co. in Bethel is wrong and what he did is against what we in this industry should be working toward.
As providers of food and beverage to our guests, we owe it to our staff and guests to perform our jobs with due consideration for the public health. While I agree that some of the restrictions on businesses in Maine that are unaffected by the coronavirus may be excessive, I strongly oppose the type of “protest” that Savage has conducted.
We restaurateurs, as purveyors of food and spirits, should always keep the health and wholesomeness of our products and service at the foremost of our efforts. Savage has, unfortunately, put politics and public opinion on the menu at his establishment. In doing so he has added risk to his community, his guests, and cast us all in a bad light.
Hopefully, the record will show that most of the businesses serving food and spirits in the state of Maine are doing the best we can to protect the health of our staff and guests. I hope that the public knows most of Maine’s independent restaurants are working hard to provide our essential services with the least possible risk to our guests, our staff, and the public.
Michael Quigg
Owner
Beale Street Barbeque
Bath
The vocal minority
According to the history books, President Nixon coined the term “silent majority” in a televised speech to the nation about the Vietnam War on Nov. 3, 1969. Democratic and “left wing” protestors had taken to the streets to loudly protest the war, and Nixon was imploring his followers, the “silent majority,” to hold firm with him. We are seeing the same phenomenon today, only in reverse.
Since the advent of the Tea Party, some 10 years ago, the loudest protests have come from ultra-conservative Republicans and ” right wingers.” They protest against what they perceive as government interference in their lives, and for guns, against abortion and the media, and now, while facing the COVID-19 crisis, to ignore the advice of health professionals and quickly reopen the country.
While not entirely silent (think of the Women’s March after the election of President Donald Trump), I see Democrats generally minding their manners and attempting to make reasoned counterarguments. The fundamental difference between the late 1960s and now is that some of today’s loudest protestors march brandishing firearms. In a recent protest in Michigan, protestors even carried guns into that state’s capitol building.
What remains the same is that even though they receive the greatest amount of media attention, all these protestors — then and now — appear to be in the minority. Hopefully today’s politicians will recognize this fact, stop fearing the loud minority, and actively campaign for the support of the new silent majority. It was a winning strategy in the 1960s, and it could be a winning strategy today.
David Klausmeyer
Ellsworth
More about advance directives
Compliments to the BDN on tackling the important issue of advance care planning in the event of future serious illnesses, especially during the current pandemic.
Typos can be misleading: the title should have read, “Advance Directives,” the correct term used throughout the editorial except in the third-to-last paragraph. The term has nothing to do with “beginning, intermediate, advanced” levels of decision-making, but everything to do with having conversations and communicating preferences in advance, as the editorial emphasizes.
Part of everyone’s conversation on this topic should include the primary care practitioner. It is important to understand that, while many intensive care therapies are intended to save lives, the likelihood that they will decreases substantially with a person’s burden of chronic illness, especially in the setting of acute coronavirus infection requiring intensive care. Resuscitations are attempted in the absence of a prior directive not to attempt, but among persons with advanced chronic illnesses are usually unsuccessful, regrettably.
Finally, the first directive is to name one’s decision-maker, one who knows the person’s values; the second, to discuss and document one’s preferences for or against intended life-sustaining treatments.
Claus Hamann, MD
Orland