As the United States marks the first anniversary of living amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot help but reflect on how we responded and evolved as an organization.
The mission of Healthcentric Advisors is to offer resources and expertise to measure and improve the quality, safety, and value of person-centered healthcare. And we had to pivot to ensure we met the immediate needs of the providers and communities we serve throughout New England.
Our offices went entirely remote like so many in the country. Since our work spans many states, we were fortunate to have created the infrastructure to transition to working remotely quickly. None of us expected to face a year of this shift, but we were all too busy springing into action to notice.
Like the whole world, we needed to find ways of coping with a pandemic. It wasn’t just about figuring out what each day would be like between school closures, office closures, and interruption of life as we all knew it—but to figure out new ways of deploying our expertise to assist providers caring for patients and residents infected with COVID-19.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long for us to pull resources together for providers all over the region:
As a part of the IPRO QIN-QIO, we were vital to making sure nursing homes and other health care communities received the necessary support. We held virtual office hours to ensure long-term care facilities received technical assistance and education on the CDCs data collection requirements. We had webinars about telehealth, PPE, and the rapidly changing landscape of infection control measures. Now, we’re working to boost vaccine confidence within long-term care facilities’ staff.
We rolled out an online peer-to-peer learning collaborative using the ECHO model to allow nursing homes to interact with each other in-depth with national quality improvement experts.
Our long-term care experts reflect on what they see a year later after working in collaboration with partners like the Rhode Island Department of Health, supporting long-term care with infection prevention protocols.
And we reached out to our patient and family advisors to get their reflections on how the pandemic has impacted them, how they feel about getting vaccinated, and what they’re looking forward to as things return to a “new normal.”
We launched a COVID-19 remote monitoring tool to help clinicians monitor participating patients with COVID-19 symptoms. The system enables care teams to send their patients daily text messages to track symptoms of COVID-19 and be alerted – in real-time – if symptoms worsen. This tool allows patients to recover at home safely, reducing exposure—while supporting information-sharing of a constantly changing virus. We expanded our remote physiological monitoring platform so physician practices could more effectively monitor their chronic disease patients while minimizing exposure to the COVID-19 virus.
While we may have settled into a routine, the long-term impact of this pandemic on health care is impossible to predict. However, one thing is for certain, Healthcentric Advisors continues to work with providers all over the region to be sure they have the tools they need to enhance health care delivery.
