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Central Ohio Health Information Exchange
Emergency Department Care Coordination
Mental Health Access
Central Ohio Hospital Quality Collaborative
Blood Supply
Columbus Proton Therapy Consortium
Caring for the Uninsured
Health Information Translations
Ohio Better Birth Outcomes
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The four hospital systems have partnered with the
business community, physicians, and others to establish the Central Ohio
Health Information Exchange, or COHIE, with a goal of assisting primary
care physicians and critical access hospitals successfully implement
electronic health record technology. In April, it was announced that
COHIE will be awarded $6 million to assist provide adopt HER systems in
a 14 county region.
COHC has joined collaborative partners --
AccessHealth Columbus, the Columbus Medical Association and the Central
Ohio Trauma System -- on an initiative to share information across
emergency departments in order to improve patient quality and reduce
costs. To assist with the effort, an advisory committee, represented by
a broad collation of community organizations, is meeting to provide
guidance on patient centered principles, shared policies and procedures,
and technology options.
Facing reduced bed capacity and higher demand
for behavioral health services, central Ohio psychiatric providers are
working together to ensure continued access to care for patients in need
of inpatient services. Franklin County’s three adult hospital systems --
Mount Carmel Health System, OhioHealth and The Ohio State University
Medical Center – are partnering with Netcare, the local crisis
intervention facility, and Twin Valley Behavioral HealthCare, a state
psychiatric hospital, to communicate psychiatric bed availability
throughout the area. Working with COHC and the Columbus Foundation, this
group has developed a web-based secure bed board, which lists all
psychiatric patients needing admission in the entire community as well
as all open and potential beds. Representatives from each entity then
communicate daily by conference call to place the right patient in the
right bed at the right time. This collaborative effort has reduced the
wait time for patients in the crisis intervention facility, the
emergency departments and medical surgical/ICU beds.
In
2003, central Ohio hospitals created the Central Ohio Hospital Quality
Collaborative, a quality improvement initiative, managed by the Ohio
Hospital Association, to improve heart attack failure, heart attack,
pneumonia care and surgical care in the community. Since its inception,
the Collaborative has undertaken additional quality improvement
projects, including reducing hospital acquired infections and
eliminating incidents of patient harm. Through the collaborative,
hospitals have demonstrated their commitment to creating an environment
in which they can learn and share best practices, engage in
quality-improvement projects and standardize processes which are proven
to improve the quality of care for patients. Learn more about the
Central Ohio Hospital Quality
Collaborative.
In the late 1990s, central Ohio hospitals began
facing large price increases for blood and blood products from the
American Red Cross, Central Ohio Region. As a result, the hospitals
entered into discussions with the Red Cross, which lead to the formation
of the Joint Committee on Local Accountability (JCOLA) with the goal of
assuring a safe, effective and cost efficient blood supply for the
Central Ohio region.
The four hospital systems are
working with Battelle to investigate the feasibility of bringing a
proton therapy cancer treatment facility to Ohio. Proton therapy
delivers radiation to a more targeted area than traditional approaches.
It has the potential to spare more healthy tissue or organs because the
radiation more precisely hits the tumor. Patients could experience fewer
side effects, reduced hospitalization and improved medical benefits with
the technology.
Franklin County hospitals have seen large spikes
in the number of uninsured patients seeking care, with admissions rising
three-and-a-half times the amount of the overall population in the last
four years alone. Unlike many other large cities, where designated
charity care hospitals are established, Columbus is fortunate that local
hospitals have a long-standing commitment to share responsibility for
providing care to all members of our community, regardless of their
ability to pay. Hospital leaders recently reaffirmed that commitment by
adopting a
uniform charity care policy, in which they agree to follow the same
guidelines when providing free and significantly discounted care to
patients. Hospital leaders have also agreed to
principles which each hospital system follows when working with
patients in need of financial assistance.
In 2005, the four Franklin County hospital
systems launched a Web site,
www.HealthInfoTranslations.org, to address a growing problem within
the central Ohio community: a lack of patient education materials for
low-literacy and limited English-speaking patients. The hospitals
recognized that more and more individuals in our community have limited
English language skills or a low literacy level, which could be a
barrier to their ability to fully understand healthcare related
information. HealthInfoTranslations.org includes more than 3,000 free
resources to help clinicians teach patients with complex communications
needs. The patient education materials are available in English and 17
additional languages, including Arabic, Bosnian, Simplified Chinese,
Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, French, Russian,
Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Somali, Marshallese, Portuguese and
Tagalog. Health topics on the site include diagnostic tests,
diseases and
conditions, exercise
and rehabilitation, food
and diet,
health and
wellness, home
care, pain
and comfort, pediatrics,
pregnancy and
baby care,
safety,
stress
and coping, and surgeries
and treatments.
Since April 2009, the four hospital systems have
joined with Columbus Public Health and local government and community
organizations to reduce the number of recurrent preterm births in
Franklin County . In Franklin County alone, more than 13 percent of
births occur preterm with that rate rising as high as one in five births
for mothers with high risk conditions. Each year, more than 2,000 babies
are born too early in Franklin County. Preterm birth — birth before 37
weeks gestation — is the leading cause of death among newborns in our
community. Together, this group is using the latest research to improve
outcomes for high risk pregnant women and their children in Franklin
County. OBBO is focused on reducing preterm births locally through
specific interventions: encouraging administration of progesterone
treatments, educating women on the importance of safe spacing between
pregnancies, and discouraging scheduled deliveries. To learn more about
the Better Birth Outcomes initiative, read the 2009
"Healthy
Beginnings" report. |