Greater Cincinnati is fortunate to have several large healthcare providers who work together to serve the community, especially over the past few months amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Health Collaborative, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to improving healthcare and patient outcomes throughout the region, has led the region’s response to the pandemic by coordinating the collaboration between more than 270 healthcare systems, including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, UC Health and TriHealth.
“Our jurisdiction includes Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Southeast Indiana for a total of 14 counties. That's a lot of people, and it's a lot of different health systems,” said Christa Hyson, MPH, Assistant Director of Emergency Response and Public Information Officer at The Health Collaborative. “We are lucky in this region to have so many health systems be able to work together for one goal to benefit the community.”
Since concerns about the novel coronavirus first arose in the area in January 2020, The Health Collaborative has collaborated with healthcare providers in the tri-state area to organize a unified response to the pandemic, coordinating everything from messaging to personal protective equipment (PPE) distribution.
“We make sure that we coordinate efforts in the event of an emergency. We run the regional cache of supplies, which was worth its weight in gold this time, because we have the regional cache for PPE, including gloves, gowns, masks, ventilators, and things like that so we can rapidly deploy those resources to the hospitals that need them most,” said Hyson. “We make sure we're looking at this through a regional lens so that no one area or one population suffers.”
Thankfully, The Health Collaborative already had strong relationships with the region’s many healthcare providers when the crisis hit earlier this year, including an existing Disaster Preparedness Coalition. As part of its response, The Health Collaborative also launched the Regional COVID Communications Center (RC3) to share “culturally competent and equitable information about COVID-19 prevention, community spread, testing availability, and other critical news to help individuals and businesses make smart decisions with the most current and credible information.”
The Health Collaborative will continue working with its partner hospitals to develop long-term solutions to manage the pandemic moving forward. Now that the initial panic has passed, The Health Collaborative is transitioning its focus to determine how healthcare providers will respond and maintain consistent messaging in the coming months.
According to Hyson, Greater Cincinnati is well prepared to continue managing the pandemic. Hospitals are not close to capacity as they have been in other areas. Hyson emphasized that people should not avoid seeking medical care out of fear of being exposed to COVID-19 or being admitted to crowded hospitals.
“We're actually doing well because our hospitals are playing well together and working together for supplies, staffing, big PPE shipments, et cetera,” said Hyson. “We have representatives from each organization at the table, so everybody has a role to play.”
For more information about The Health Collaborative, visit www.healthcollab.org.