Hartford HealthCare (HHC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used their existing partnership during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to create crisis innovation that will remain in place long after the last infected patient leaves the hospital, according to HHC President and CEO Jeff Flaks.

“These types of breakthrough innovations have enormous impact and you can imagine globally that could change healthcare around the world on so many different levels,” he said. “Even here in our home state, we’re seeing that type of benefit. Look at the facts – we were building an adjunct hospital, splitting ventilators to help two patients at once. We hope and expect to keep that innovation going.”

Dr. Fiona Murray, associate dean of innovation at MIT’s management school and co-director of its Innovation Institute, said the COVID-19 pandemic was the epitome of crisis communications that HHC teams were “living every day.”

“Take telehealth,” she said June 11 during the daily HHC media briefing. “We’ve been trying that for 10 years and there were always barriers. All of a sudden, when you have a common purpose, you can get things done.”

Flaks listed these examples of innovative thinking the system has acted upon during the pandemic:

  • Addressing healthcare disparities with mobile testing units that bring free COVID-19 testing where people need it most, including homeless shelters and nursing homes.
  • Helping HHC colleagues struggling with emotional, physical and financial constraints through a new Colleague Support Center.
  • Moving primary and specialty care appointments to virtual health.

Dr. Murray praised the system’s ability to tap local companies quickly – producing personal protective equipment (PPE), for example, to meet soaring demands – and move its financial and human resources around the state to meet needs.

“The easy answer is to turn to the government for help, but in the short-term, you turned to entrepreneurs,” she said.

Flaks said the innovation and predictive modeling that results from the MIT partnership will continue.

“That predictive modeling helps us around planning and response to not only what we know today, but what we are anticipating in the future so that we can map our PPE, ventilators, critical care nurses, physicians who do airway management and critical care physicians to ensure we have the right people in the right place,” he said.

To learn more about innovation at Hartford HealthCare, click here.

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