This message is from Brian Nester, DO, MBA, FACOEP, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lehigh Valley Health Network.
Dear Colleagues,
The amazing team at LVHN is strong. And, our strength is exactly what we need during this tough fight. I am incredibly thankful for all you are doing for our patients, our community and for one another. As every day passes, I become even more LVHN Proud of our remarkable team and our world-class health network.
Week Four of COVID-19 operations has come and gone. As expected, the number of confirmed cases in our region and the number of patients we are caring for continue to increase significantly. This past week, I had the opportunity to meet colleagues on the front lines at LVH–Pocono, LVH–Muhlenberg and LVH–Cedar Crest. Their dedication, expertise, bravery and heroism (yes, the work of our health care professionals is heroic) were inspiring. And, I am certain they inspire every person and every family we continue to serve during this crisis, as well as every LVHN colleague. The stories and faces from these visits and other postings of our colleagues are on full display on our new website, LVHN.org/COVIDSTRONG, and on social media. Also front and center in Week Four were our actions to transform LVHN into a digital health system. As an example, by building on our Epic and IT infrastructure, more than 65 percent of our LVPG encounters are now performed virtually rather than face-to-face. In addition, we are supporting 22 different types of digital encounters. This has been an extraordinary technologic and human transformation, led by our remarkable LVPG and Technology colleagues – another heroic accomplishment, with even more to come.
Here is a list of what we accomplished this past week:
- As part of our effort to intentionally reduce face-to-face patient encounters and encourage people to stay home, we started limiting in-person visits at LVPG practices and emphasizing virtual care delivery methods. We are now performing about 1,000 LVHN Video Visits, 200 E-visit and up to 3,000 phone visits each day.
- We introduced E-visits and LVHN Video Visits for rehabilitation patients on the MyLVHN app and MyLVHN.org.
- We extubated our first patient with COVID-19 at LVH–Muhlenberg – a testament to the expertise and quality of our critical care personnel and infrastructure.
- In my first weekly CEO Update Video for colleagues, I introduced LVHN's new core values – compassion, integrity, collaboration and excellence – and explained how they will help us win this fight.
- We opened two new ExpressCARE locations in Allentown to safely care for people with minor injuries and common illnesses.
- New visitation guidelines for our Family Birth and Newborn Centers were implemented due to increasing concerns about COVID-19 exposure from asymptomatic individuals and our awareness of regional relocation of patients coming from high-risk areas such as New York City.
- For the health and well-being of colleagues, we shared resources available to you through My Total Health for stress reduction, fitness opportunities and health coaching, as well as services provided by Preferred EAP for colleagues feeling isolated, fearful or depressed.
- To help prevent the spread of infection, we temporarily postponed screening mammograms and visits from our mobile mammography coach and ensured women that diagnostic mammograms will continue as needed.
- To help keep colleagues safe, we temporarily discontinued employee shuttle services at LVH–Cedar Crest, LVH–Muhlenberg and LVH–17th Street. While this was the right decision to make, given the crisis, we do apologize for this inconvenience.
- On their blogs on LVHN Daily, Chief Operating Officer Terry Capuano commended your exceptional teamwork during this crisis, while Medical Staff President Patricia Martin, MD, reminded providers to be gentle with themselves while rising to the occasion.
- We completed four intensive weeks of dashboard development, yielding essential information about personal protective equipment (PPE), medications, bed management, ventilator use, testing, critical care capacity, clinical staffing and many other domains that allow us to make timely decisions. All of these dashboards (and many others) are refreshed daily, and some are updated several times a day.
As we start Week Five, we will continue to focus our efforts on enhancing our surge preparedness to deliver timely and innovative care strategies during these emergency conditions. Here is what we're working on:
- Continuous planning for medical-surgical and critical care bed and staffing demands, with ongoing load balancing, as needed, between health network campuses
- Continuous aggressive supply chain actions with our vendors and legislators to ensure adequate PPE for our teams, sufficient testing supplies for Health Network Laboratories (HNL) and critical medications for our patients
- Ongoing advocacy with state and federal agencies and legislators to ensure Pennsylvania (and LVHN) receives its fair share of disaster relief dollars, given our adjacency to the metro New York epicenter of COVID-19
- Ongoing analysis and compilation of the latest COVID-19 projections, applied to the Greater Lehigh Valley region (and to each county and hospital campus) to ensure specificity in decision-making
- Accelerating use of video visits and other virtual care delivery methods outlined above to enhance access for COVID-19 related problems and to maintain access for all routine medical issues
- Continuously enhance our internal testing capacity at HNL. Through the extraordinary work of HNL, our health network is a leader in COVID-19 testing in Pennsylvania, responsible for 16 percent of all testing in the state. This valuable competency will enhance our tracing of COVID-19-positive patients and help to reduce the spread.
- Sharing more of your stories of hope, care and courage on LVHN.org/COVIDSTRONG. Please keep sending your pictures, videos and stories. We want to profile your extraordinary work and strength. Your stories are inspiring to your colleagues and our community members.
There is one more thing we all must do in the weeks ahead. It is something we've been doing since the start of this outbreak. Please continue to tell your family, friends and neighbors that the most important thing they can do to keep themselves and others safe is STAY HOME. When I visited with our front-line colleagues this past week, I asked them to provide advice to their colleagues across the health network and to the communities they serve. The most frequently noted bit of advice was also STAY HOME. So, honor our front-line providers by sharing their message loud and clear to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Even though this message is being shared from seemingly every news outlet and health care organization in the nation, we know that some people are not heeding the warning. We cannot stress enough the importance of practicing social distancing and the fact that violating this rule can have deadly consequences.
Until Week Six, thank you for being COVID STRONG and LVHN Proud. Stay safe.
Brian Nester, DO, MBA, FACOEP
President and Chief Executive Officer, Lehigh Valley Health Network
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