What is this about?

The 4-month-old COVID-19 Pandemic has directly affected virtually everyone in the world. The absence of science-based, consensus-mediated, clinical guidelines for its treatment has been a sore point with front line practitioners.  Now we have two major candidates for that definitive treatment guidance.  The “long” form (126 page) version from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the “short” form version from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).  The document in this edition of Connections newsletter includes both sets of guidelines.

Why is this important?

This document represents the best science we have on the issues of treatment for all COVID-19 cases.  Everyone wants to avoid the mortality and morbidity risks attached to infection with this novel Coronavirus.  In our collective role of providing health and wellness information to employees and their family members through workplace wellness programs, we need to maintain as much scientific accuracy and validity that we can.  These two sets of guidelines reflect the best current thinking of our leading scientists and clinicians.  That’s important for our individual peace of mind as well as for the treatment of family and friends that are unfortunate enough to contract the disease.

What can you do with this document?

• First, skim through the two sets of guidelines to get a general feel for what they contain.
• Next, determine if the NEJM version of the guidelines is appropriate to share directly with senior management, other major stakeholders, volunteers and vendors.
• Next, be ready to make available the long-form (NIH) guideline document for those wanting more. Also the NIH document includes updates right up to the date of this newsletter edition.
• Next, consider if you should post this on your website as a resource for employees or on the FAQ portion of your website.
• Next, working with your benefits administrator, you might consider how to make these guidelines available to selected clinicians that are serving your employees and family members.

In summary, we believe that these two sets of definitive current clinical treatment guidelines are important for all of us, and particularly that all COVID-19 clinical care provided to our beneficiaries is consistent with the best science and clinical consensus that is available.