Download our case study: Emanate Health Advances COVID-19 Contact Tracing With MEDITECH
About: Emanate Health is the largest nonprofit healthcare provider in California’s San Gabriel Valley. It consists of Emanate Health Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina, Emanate Health InterCommunity Hospital in Covina, Foothill Presbyterian Hospital in Glendora, and Emanate Health Home Care and Hospice in West Covina, as well as a network of clinics. More than one million people receive care within this 625-bed organization.Challenge: During the pandemic, preventing the spread of COVID-19 was among the most significant challenges facing healthcare providers. One of the keys to slowing down transmission was effective contact tracing to identify people who may have been exposed to an infected person. At the height of the pandemic, the timing was crucial for implementing a reliable and efficient system to conduct contact tracing among staff and patients to minimize the exposure window while identifying anyone at risk after a potential exposure to COVID-19.
Execution: Emanate Health collaborated with MEDITECH to quickly develop contact tracing dashboards in its MEDITECH Expanse EHR. Its initial goal was to identify patients and staff at high risk for COVID-19 exposure as a result of an inpatient testing positive during their hospital stay. Achieving this goal required staff to clearly understand the exposure window, identify at-risk patients and hospital staff, and prioritize COVID-19 cases determined to have high-risk exposure events. Analyzing patient location history while integrating data from other vendor sources helped staff identify roommates who may have been exposed, employees who may be at high risk for exposure, and patients who are also employees.
Results: Emanate Health and MEDITECH leveraged Business and Clinical Analytics dashboards within Expanse — integrating data from other vendor sources — to customize an automated contact tracing program. Contact tracing dashboards enable staff to:
- Identify high-risk exposure events based on the exposure window.
- Accurately prioritize COVID-19 cases identified as coming from high-risk exposure events.
- Identify at-risk patients and staff to minimize the spread.
Emanate Health plans to incorporate BCA dashboards into daily operational use by Infection Control and Employee Health to perform similar contact tracing for other infectious diseases such as C. difficile and MRSA.
Quote: “We can identify not just the source of COVID-19 infection — who did this patient/staff member likely get the virus from — but also who did the patient or staff member potentially expose during their infectious period. I am not aware of any system in the market that can accomplish what we just did.”Loucine Kasparian, Corporate Director, Infection Control, Emanate Health
