By: Kent Weakley, site director of the Nationwide Children’s Marysville Close To Home Center
2020 has been an unprecedented year for all of us. Hospitals and other health care providers have certainly faced challenges and uncertainty as the pandemic has continued. However, where there is challenge, there is opportunity to grow and evolve.
We learned many things at Nationwide Children’s Hospital this year, the most important being that we rise to the occasion during a global pandemic, and it brings out the best in us. We can say with certainty that our One Team values and Best Outcomes approach for patients defined our culture at the Marysville Close To Home Center in 2020.
During this year, we encountered several changes that seemingly happened overnight through teamwork and community partnerships: safer distancing within our facilities, personal protection equipment (PPE) recycling and conservation efforts, and advanced therapeutic treatments. Our main campus drive-through testing center in Columbus and patient hotline were started up in a matter of days when the pandemic first started. The drive-through testing center on main campus has tested as many as 500 patients per day and continues to see a high volume of patients seven days a week.
We have also learned that health care can be effectively delivered in a virtual setting through telehealth. Leveraging technology during this challenging time has been paramount in delivering on our mission of providing the best quality health care to children. In 2019, Nationwide Children’s saw approximately 200 patients total through telehealth. This year, that number is approaching an astounding 300,000 telehealth visits, five thousand of which were for patients living in Union County. We anticipate this trend to continue, and we recognize the importance of meeting our patients and their families where they are, whether in-person or virtually, to connect them with the important care they need.
We believe our community will be more reliant upon digital services given the quick pivot to working from home, schooling from home and adapting quickly to the state’s stay-at-home order. It will be important to re-imagine our customer offerings with use of digital options. As such, our community will require expanded and enhanced broadband infrastructure and internet access. Equally important will be to continue to build supply chain resilience and adapt our operations to the post-COVID reality. Now and going forward, it will be the responsibility of health care providers, governments, insurance companies and many others to make sure we use our new technologies to help the children we serve in a post-pandemic world.
All in all, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the communities we serve will persevere through the pandemic and will be stronger going forward. While we do not know exactly what the landscape will look like on the other side of COVID-19, we remain committed to providing the highest quality care to our patients and their families.