The Central Ohio Hospital Council serves as the forum for community hospitals to come together to address issues that impact the delivery of health care to central Ohioans. Through the COHC, member hospitals collaborate with each other and with other community stakeholders to improve the quality, value and accessibility of health care in the central Ohio region.

Central Ohio hospitals are collaborating on a number of initiatives to meet this vision, a few of which are highlighted below.

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

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.