York County Medicine Winter 2020 - 8

YO R K C O M E D S O C . O R G

FEATURES:

COVID-19 Lessons
Help WellSpan Continue
to Respond to the Pandemic
By: Anthony Aquilina, D.O.
Executive Vice President and Chief Physician
Executive at WellSpan Health

At WellSpan Health, we have learned some important lessons
about COVID-19, lessons that are serving us well as we support the
urgent needs of our patients in the surging pandemic.
We have learned which of our neighbors require additional
resources and attention. We have learned the importance of early,
organized preparation. We continue to learn how to treat patients
in the most effective ways. And we are using those lessons to shape
our ongoing response to the pandemic, as we marshal our teams and
our resources to continue to battle the critical stage of COVID-19
that is now impacting our local communities.
This is not easy work. Our teams are being tested. I see the marks
left on their faces by their PPE after a long shift. We all are weary of
this deadly pandemic. But one vital lesson we have learned: We need
our communities to join with us in this life-saving battle.

get the vaccine as well as how we will store, track and administer
the vaccine. Our planning must be in accordance with Pennsylvania
state directives. This is important work and we must be prepared to
move quickly, across our entire region.

Improving care
In general, our care teams are more knowledgeable about how
to treat this serious viral infection than when it first hit. Better
therapeutics are being discovered and treatment protocols are
regularly being modified with new information about best practices.
Still, COVID-19 continues to cause some people to get very, very
ill. Even with improvements to care, saving lives depends on our
communities' ability to slow the spread, particularly at this crucial
moment in time.

Here are some of our COVID-19 lessons.

Working as a team, across a region
WellSpan is using a team approach to help manage our resources
across our eight hospitals and six counties to best manage the
talents of our 20,000 employees as the virus soars in the region.
Our hospitals have a special team that meets regularly to discuss
the ongoing number of COVID-19 patients and cases in specific
locations, pulling on the resources of our system. That gives us the
advantage of allowing our hospitals to support each other with
equipment and team members to ensure we are helping people
in the right places, at the right time, which has never been more
important.
Our system is preparing to be ready to offer the COVID-19
vaccine, when it becomes available. We have formed a team to set
guidelines about the order in which our employees and patients can
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York County Medicine | W I N T E R 2020/2021

Being driven by data
Data integrity is key in our fight against the virus as it intensifies.
Like health systems everywhere, WellSpan maintains a detailed
database of COVID-19 statistics, noting who is most vulnerable,
where it is most prevalent, who has the worst symptoms and other
information.
As we have continuously reviewed trends across our region,
we noted a higher positivity rate in testing for COVID-19 in
the Hispanic/Latino and the Black community. In our white
communities, the rate has averaged 8 percent. The rate in the
Hispanic/Latino community has averaged more than twice that, at
19 percent. In the Black community, the rate has lingered around
13 percent.
To address these trends, WellSpan translated COVID-19
information materials, both online and printed, into Spanish. We


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York County Medicine Winter 2020

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