Firelands Regional Health System

Monitors COVID-19 Patients With MEDITECH’s BCA Solution

Firelands Regional Health System (Sandusky, OH) aims to stay ahead of the COVID-19 surge using analytics to identify coronavirus cases, trends, and resources. The 405-bed medical center developed an interactive reporting dashboard, specifically for COVID-19 patients, using MEDITECH’s Business and Clinical Analytics.

Tracking in real time with a COVID-19 reporting dashboard

Moving COVID-19 data from spreadsheets into a dynamic BCA reporting dashboard enabled Firelands to meet the organization’s needs: one version drills down to patient-level detail for Infection Control staff, while the other contains high-level data for executives. Senior administration and Infection Control monitor the dashboard and share situation reports with medical staff and managers, the CDC, and other reporting bodies.

“Our BCA dashboard has quickly become our go-to resource for the most updated information on our COVID-19 status and response,” said Denao Ruttino, CIO/VP of Operations. “We are using this tool to monitor the state of the facility in real time, such as how many patients are coming through the ED and where bottlenecks are occurring.”

Using its COVID-19 dashboard, which updates hourly, Firelands is able to track surge capacity, case locations, bed occupancy and capacity, symptoms, lab results, testing by location, mortality rate, and patients discharged with COVID-19.

Coordinating responses through a central command center

Firelands’ remote workers, medical staff, and community physicians conduct socially distanced meetings and phone calls every day to go over the dashboard to see where things are trending.

“We’ve been able to react to situations, as we can see them in near-real time. Similarly, we’ve been able to identify test turnaround times and compare those turnaround times by outsourced lab to see where we are getting the fastest results,” said Ruttino.

The dashboard is also aiding in executing patient treatment plans, using special indicators to flag patients with COVID-19 symptoms. Visualization graphs of lab orders and test results are interactive, providing insights that help Firelands to improve its turnaround times.

By knowing where the medical center stands at all times, and predicting what’s around the corner, Firelands is able to be proactive in its planning to ensure it has the appropriate resources in place.