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 Welcome to this week in Health IT News, where we look at the news that will impact health it. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcast videos and collaboration events dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. This week I'm doing, as you know, a series of interviews with health system executives.

Who will share what their plans are for Covid 19 preparedness. Um, if your system has a best practice to share, please shoot me a note at Bill this week in health it.com and we will do a 10 to 15 minute, uh, zoom video recording that will hopefully benefit the industry. I wanna thank Sirius Healthcare who reached out to me last week and asked me if they could sponsor a series of these conversations.

To help the industry prepare, and I appreciate their foresight in this matter and their commitment to the industry that they serve. Today's conversation is with, uh, Dr. Stacy Johnston of Baptist Health, Jacksonville, Florida. Good afternoon, Stacy, and welcome to. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to meet with us. I know, uh, I know you guys are putting in long hours working, uh, diligently, uh, to get everything right for the community. So I'll just get right to the questions. The first question's pretty general, and it's, uh, what is your health system doing from a preparedness standpoint?

So what are you, uh, what are you putting in place for your community and, and what kind of things have you been asked to do? Sure. So we've started, uh, having daily calls, uh, with our system leaders, and that includes physicians, it, it includes other neighboring, uh, hospitals and facilities so that we're creating a, uh, a coastal community approach.

Um, so not just a Baptist organization involving all of our, uh, physicians as well too. And on this call, we discuss, um, some of the items that we're doing, uh. As, um, as a health system to enable the care for our community. And for instance, we are setting up a drive-through testing center. Um, it's set to go live starting tomorrow morning.

Uh, we have our, our dry run today. And with that we have our ED partners working, uh, as the physicians running this program. And it will start with a telemedicine visit. In order to do the initial screening and based on the screening, uh, a laboratory tests will be ordered, um, for c Ovid 19. Um, at that time, if they meet certain criteria, uh, from an epidemiological standpoint, uh, that specimen will be sent to the Department of Health.

However, uh, the physicians have the capability of ordering the test to be sent to LabCorp if they do not necessarily meet certain criteria, but are still at high risk of having c ovid 19. And we are actually, our healthcare, it is helping, um, to, uh, collect the specimens. And so, uh, we are having a nursing shortage, as we've had several nurses, um, go in, um, I isolation, um, because of prior exposure, um, and so many

Many of our informaticists have a nursing background. We have been asked to, um, volunteer. And amazingly, all of our, um, our informaticists nurses have all volunteered to help run the specimen collection through our drive-through program utilizing telemedicine as well too. That's, that's, that's amazing.

Yeah. Um, yeah, let, let ask you two follow questions that the first is the community response. I mean, because this is a, this is a all hands on deck community kind of thing, so you're coordinating with people that you would normally be in competition with. How far does that reach? Is it just within Jacksonville or are you reaching beyond that?

So we're, um, approaching this as kind of a regional, so, um, in Southeast Georgia, we'll, we will be able to do their testing as well too. And, uh, Jacksonville Baptist covers five counties and so we will extend into all five of those counties and be the centralized testing center, um, that people can just drive up, get their testing, and then go on their merry way.

And then, um, we're creating that feedback loop of how. Again, the Department of Health will notify, um, the providers that they get the testing, and then our, our ed providers will then, um, do the feedback for those, um, that get over sent over to LabCorp. So how are you keeping up with all that? So, you know, the, the federal and the state, your multiple counties, multiple states, you know, relaxing telehealth guidelines, they're relaxing.

How are you keeping up with this, just the onslaught of information that's coming your way. Uh, so we're all dividing and conquering. Um, we have our informatics side and our IT side. Looking at the ONC regulations, we are actually starting to utilize FaceTime for our inpatient providers, um, to see the covid, um, high risk patients, uh, as well to for admissions.

That's one thing we are just now starting to look into. We are expanding our telemedicine capability and, uh, for our hospitalists. Our primary care physicians as well as our Age Well Center, which is our senior center. And we are also, um, utilizing, so we've talked about telemedicine. One thing we're also doing is we have bought some equipment that will have us capability of doing the, uh, testing in-house.

Uh, we are waiting on FDA approval, uh, for the reagents, um, which we expect will come next week. And when we have that capability, we . Uh, we've built an order in the system already, and then once that order is built, then we will have to interface it back into our EHR, uh, for that, again, that closed loop, um, communication of the laboratory results.

Um, so we've been making changes to the testing and order, um, the orderable on the fly. We've been doing real live changes in the system. Um. And, and so honestly, we've really come together as a system. So we have our operational leaders working alongside of technology team. Um, again, the informaticists are going and volunteering their time, so it's really come together as a close collaboration.

Um, the call that I just, uh, got off of at one o'clock, um, had approximately 250 people on the call to participate. Wow. Uh, and, and it's amazing that your people are stepping in. Does that create, uh, challenges just knowing who's actually available and who's actually working on what? When you're, I I, I assume the requests just keep coming at a pretty, uh, significant pace.

How are you managing that inflow of requests for maybe a new screen, maybe a new analytic, maybe a new, uh, you know, standing up. Of new services in, in a parking lot and those kind of things, uh, with the changing dynamic of the number of staff you have available. So we also have a daily call from the information systems leaders.

So basically all, um, all of the vice presidents, the managers and directors, uh, we, um, have a call at five o'clock, um, to discuss what the asks were, um, from that day so that we can make sure that we're managing them internally so that I'm not, um, promising that the informaticist can do something when, um, the CTO may be saying that.

There's something else that we could be doing with our, our team members. So, um, at, at five o'clock we are, um, bring, coming together to create a, a standardized communication template of all the asks and what we've accomplished through that day. And then anything that we might need to prepare for the next day.

And then, of course, looking weeks ahead, for instance, um, we are working with an organization of how to work from home, so a, a work from home program, um, and how to support. Support that and that many of our, um, employees are able to VPN in, but we did not have enough VPN licensees, so we had to expand that.

And are there, are there, uh, certain dashboards or things that you have had to stand up, uh, rather quickly that, that you think other health systems would benefit from? Um, you know, having stood up or, or being prepared? Yeah, so we are of course are monitoring the data. Um, one thing that we built was the way we built the Order Bowl for c Ovid 19.

We then created a dashboard to see how many people it's been ordered on. So to have that closed loop communication to make sure all of those labs are followed up appropriately, um, that has already been built. Um, we've also, in terms of screens, we have not built any new screens. We are, um. Although we, uh, any, when you log in, we're giving an update of what was communicated in that, um, uh, that 12 o'clock call.

Uh, so it's been asked that we refresh the computers at every shift change just so the nurses are aware of any new updates that are coming from the system because those front facing screens when people log in, ha, will be updated every shift. This, this may seem trivial, but it, uh, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, which is, um, coding.

How are you handling coding? Because there's a whole new set of codes that just. Got dumped on this as well. Is that, was that easy to set up? Or just standard practice? So, yeah, I mean, we're just doing, we're doing standard practice as best as we can. Um, with any of those, we have relaxed some kind of our change requirements.

So typically we have, um, you know, a change, freeze and uh, uh. A release state. However, we've been really relaxing all of our release dates. We're, we're basically, instead of waiting the week, um, in order to do appropriate testing and validation, we're testing and validation in the same day that we're releasing any changes.

Yeah. Um, I, and you know, fi final question. I mean, you're, you're in a. Uh, you're in a beach community and, you know, we've seen the pictures from Fort Lauderdale Beach and, and other things to that effect. Does that create a, does that create any distinct challenges, uh, for you? I mean, I'm sure there was a whole bunch of spring break people, uh, that were either here and traveling through the airport and whatnot.

Does that create any distinct challenges in, in that environment? Yeah, so we are seeing, you know, we also have some cruisers. Um, so that includes our own employees. Uh, we've had multiple employees that have just recently come back from a cruise within. Now, the CDC guidelines say that anyone returning from a cruise within 14 days has to go home and, um, self isolate for 14 days.

So it's. It's affecting our employees. However, um, you know, the, the city has been very adamant about closing down public places. All of our restaurants are closed. Um, and so they've really been trying to close down the public beaches as well too. Absolutely. Well, thanks again for taking the time. I really appreciate it and I appreciate all the work that, uh, that you and your team are doing in the region.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Take care. That's all for this week. Special thanks to our channel sponsors, VMware Starbridge Advisors, Galen Healthcare health lyrics and pro talent advisors for choosing to invest in developing the next generation of health leaders. This show is a production of this week in Health It.

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