HCA Healthcare’s Dr. Perlin discusses COVID-19 with Modern Healthcare

Dr. Jonathan Perlin, HCA Healthcare’s chief medical officer and president of clinical operations, recently sat down with Modern Healthcare as part of its “The Check Up” series, to drill down on HCA Healthcare’s unique approach to navigating the pandemic, lessons learned and opportunities to rebuild and improve care.

“We’ve learned how to take care of COVID better,” Dr. Perlin told Matthew Weinstock, managing editor of Modern Healthcare. “In fact, to the point of being a learning health system—which I’ll define as one that commits to using the data that are invariably created as a byproduct of the care itself to learn and improve the system, and most importantly, to channel information back to the individual patient to improve care—it’s allowed us to increase the survival for COVID by 28%. That is, if you were admitted in March or April, compared to today, you now have a 28% better chance of surviving.”

Dr. Perlin shared how following a “five S” formula for managing  COVID-19 challenges has prepared us for the future:

1. Spikes – analyzing community trends to help meet the demands of a surge
2. Space – increasing bed capacity by appropriately managing space in our facilities
3. Supplies – maintaining enough personal protective equipment and lab testing supplies
4. Staffing – ensuring we have enough nurse, physician and respiratory therapist coverage
5. Support – having enough life support machines, like ventilators

Learn more about HCA Healthcare’s long-standing approach to use scale to accelerate learning and improvement on “The Check Up”: