Thank you, Governor Baker, for welcoming me to Massachusetts, and thank you, Pete, for welcoming us here to Beth Israel Deaconess. I’m very glad to be here.
This visit was an important opportunity to learn about the success Massachusetts has had against COVID-19 and the efforts being made toward a safe reopening.
Thanks to the efforts of frontline healthcare workers like I’ve met here at Beth Israel Deaconess, thanks to the hard work of state and local leaders like Governor Baker and his team, and thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we’re making progress against the virus every day.
Today was a chance to hear about a particularly concerning aspect of the crisis: how measures that we needed to slow the spread of the virus may be impacting our health, including through drops in important healthcare services, and what healthcare providers are doing to address that.
The number of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries receiving in-person primary care services in the Boston area dropped about 80 percent from February to April.
Thanks to creativity from providers and flexibilities from HHS, we’ve seen a surge in telehealth primary care visits, but that only made up about half the gap.
In the Boston area, we’ve seen colonoscopies and mammograms decline by over 90 percent, joint replacements down by 90 percent, and cardiac surgeries down by 70 percent. I know Beth Israel Deaconess has been measuring and studying these drops themselves.
We’ve supported healthcare institutions with funds that the President secured from Congress for healthcare providers, including more than $63 million sent to Beth Israel Deaconess already. That included a targeted allocation to hospitals that are treating large numbers of COVID-19 patients, including this one.
Despite what we’re doing to support hospitals, emergency measures are no substitute for safely reopening our healthcare institutions and giving patients confidence that they can return for the care they need.
That’s why we’re supporting states, cities, businesses, and all parts of civil society with the information and tools they need for a safe reopening.
We have to balance the health risks of the virus against the health risks of forgoing all this necessary medical care, in addition to the health risks of social isolation and the economic downturn.
The right way to think about reopening isn’t health versus the economy; it’s health versus health.
This mindset also means addressing mental health and substance abuse challenges that can be exacerbated by isolation, which I’ll be learning about later today at the Gavin Foundation, a recovery center in Charlestown.
I know Governor Baker has put a special focus on the opioid crisis.
Massachusetts should be proud that the state’s drug overdose deaths are now down more than 6 percent from their peak—but the pandemic presents a risk of backsliding, and we have data suggesting overdose spikes in some areas of the country.
The President’s top priority is the health and well-being of all Americans.
That’s why we have to be moving, like Massachusetts is, toward a safe and prudent reopening—here in our healthcare facilities and throughout our communities.
With that, we can now take some questions.
