CHPR doctoral students publish their research
April 2021
Sarah Haynes and Eduard Poltavskiy, who when earning their doctoral degrees both worked under the supervision of Patrick Romano, M.D., M.P.H., a core faculty member with CHPR, have recently published their research in scientific journals.
Dr. Poltavskiy is the lead author of “Predicting COVID-19 at skilled nursing facilities in California: do the stars align?” His paper describes research designed to identify predictors of COVID-19 that could facilitate enhanced surveillance that would help prevent future disease outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). Findings from this study suggest that SNFs with higher Quality Measures star ratings (as posted on the CMS.gov website) were more likely to house resident(s) afflicted with COVID-19. Dr. Poltravskiy and his co-authors suggested that this seemingly counterintuitive finding from early in the pandemic (data analyzed were from mid-April through May 31, 2020) “may be the result of hospital practice driving referrals of residents with high comorbidities to facilities with presumably high-quality ratings (≥3 stars) and away from facilities with low-quality ratings.”
Dr. Haynes is the lead author on “The use of telemedicine for stabilization of neonates transferred from rural community hospitals.” Haynes and her co-authors used multiple regression analysis to explore whether consulting with a neonatologist via telemedicine, as opposed to over the telephone, was associated with decreasing the time required to stabilize newborns in need of transfer from rural hospitals to a regional neonatal intensive care unit. Although no differences in stabilization times between modes of consultation were identified, the authors concluded that telemedicine still may be helpful for stabilizing infants with higher severity of illness, particularly those in respiratory distress, and that future studies should examine the impact telemedicine may have when used in conjunction with specific medical interventions.
Dr. Poltravskiy is also lead author of “Exploring the implications of the new ICD-10-CM classification system for injury surveillance: analysis of dually coded data from two medical centres,” published in the journal Injury Prevention.
Congratulations Drs. Poltravskiy and Haynes!