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July 2020 Chapter Meeting - Children's Hospital of Colorado and the Pandemic

At the July meeting of ACP, a group of members and guests from across several states heard a presentation by Gary Salvucci.  A long-time member of our Colorado Rocky Mountain Chapter, Gary has served as the Business Continuity Specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado since January of 2019.  During the pandemic, Gary has reported to the Logistics Manager as the liaison to IT.

We were pleased to be joined by students from the Business Continuity program at North Dakota State University
 
Gary began by tying the pandemic response to other types of disasters.  Those in the industry always rely on the best practices and lessons learned from other events, and the Children’s Hospital response team reviewed past pandemics to help with their planning.  They knew their fight would include helping all their patients while taking care not to be part of spreading the disease, and the Emergency Operations Command Center was initiated, following the Hospital Incident Command System model. .
 
While the hospital’s response required the implementation of many changes, Gary highlighted the following:

  • One of the first large impacts was the proliferation of Telehealth.  Children’s has a very large network of clinics that rely on the hospital for its IT services, including Telehealth.  The system supported approximately 100 visits per week before the pandemic, and now it must support over 6,000 per week.  As with most organizations, the hospital planned to update its IT infrastructure over several years.  Now the Telehealth component needed to be updated within two weeks. Equipment was added throughout the network, including devices supporting work from home, such as webcams for employees’ computers.  Smart phones enabled many of the Telehealth visits, and Gary noted that in the future more services such as heart rate monitors will move to the smart phone.

  • Changes were needed to government regulations and insurance rules.  Procedures needed to change, such as documentation requirements to support billing and compliance with HIPAA.  Facility practices such as entry and exit patterns changed to aid social distancing.  Processes changed overnight to screen hundreds of staff before every shift, and an application was created to record the information from self-screening.  All vendors, delivery people, contractors, and visitors also were screened.  The gift shop and playgrounds were closed, and seating was no longer allowed in the lobby or cafeteria.

  • The hospital partnered with Tuff Shed to build a drive-through testing facility that could be locked and included power and internet connectivity.

  • When the virus cases increased in Colorado, the hospital built tents in a parking lot for the protection of staff performing triage.  The tents included all the information systems that normally support intake into the ER, with cellular phones and printers.  All equipment including workstations on wheels could be disinfected between visits.  Hospital gear used for elective services was repurposed to support this effort.  Transcription services were modified to work with PPE, and procedures were changed to capture family and patient comments during Telehealth sessions.

  • During all this change, the hospital has had to address the severe budget impact at the hospital and the clinics.  Most have had to cut expenses, staff, and benefits.
 
Within his role in IT, Gary was able to aid in assessing the capacity for working from home, including internet bandwidth and VPN capacity.  Plans for network expansion that were to be implemented throughout 2020 were expedited to be completed within days.  Instructions to “exit VPN” to save capacity helped the effort, and the network team repurposed old equipment with the result that capacity for working from home increased by over 10 times in two weeks.  Gary helped analyze the impact of relying on one internet provider after one outage disrupted over 100 Telehealth sessions.
 
Gary closed by expressing gratitude to all the hospital leaders and front-line staff leading this massive effort.  He praised the help from partners, vendors, food providers, and the public – all those who have contributed to supporting the children and their families.




​© 2022 Association of Continuity Professionals - Colorado Rocky Mountain Chapter