Carmen captures hearts 3 Executive changes 7 Anchorage potluck 8 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
NOVEMBER 15, 2021 VOLUME 37, NUMBER 18
Graphite Health Pandemic compounds challenges for disaster planners invests to speed When Hurricane Ida was churning digital innovation across the Gulf of Mexico in late summer, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical in health sector Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had to By LISA EISENHAUER
The new company follows Civica RX model of cooperative stewardship By JULIE MINDA
SSM Health, Intermountain Healthcare and Presbyterian Healthcare Services are teaming to create a “health care utility.” The startup nonprofit company, called Graphite Health, will tackle digital interoperability challenges that slow innovation uptake in health care. It will do this by establishing a common-language platform that the company’s members can use for operationalizing digital innovations. Graphite expects to attract Catholic, other nonprofit and for-profit health care systems and philanthropic organizations as members. All members will provide expertise and capital for developing the data platform and a marketplace of technology applications that members can use. As a condition of membership, all who join will subscribe to the IT equivalent of a Hippocratic oath that obligates them to protect patients and their data. Graphite is modeled after Civica RX, a nonprofit generic pharmaceutical company established three years ago to source or manufacture essential generic drugs. More than 50 U.S. health systems representing 1,350 hospitals, and major philanthropic organizations are part of the Civica RX Dredge collective. Carter Dredge, a board member of Civica RX and Graphite Health, has been deeply involved in the start-up of both companies. The senior vice president and lead futurist for SSM Health talked to Catholic Health World about Graphite Health. What learnings from the Civica RX start-up are applicable to Graphite Health? We have learned from our work on Civica that things can build fast. When we first launched Civica we thought it would take four to five years to get traction. But when you have a really compelling and noble mission and an environment hungering for a solution and the structure to benefit everyone and bring mindshare and financial capital together, you can make real progress fast. It’s been three years since we launched Civica and we have 50 products available. Four of Civica’s seven original founding health systems are Catholic. (In addition to SSM Health, they are Providence St. Joseph Health, Trinity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives, part of CommonSpirit Health.) We expect Graphite to have high representation from Catholic health care as well, and that is essential. This is a great opportunity for Catholic Continued on 6
In this disaster drill staged at Mercy Hospital St. Louis before the pandemic, a participant posing as a patient exposed to ebola is enclosed in a portable isolation chamber for transport.
brace for a disaster on top of a crisis. The medical center was in the middle of its worst surge in COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. The patient load was so heavy that the hospital had halted elective surgeries and a team of military doctors and nurses was assisting its staff. Ida roared ashore just before Labor Day, causing 26 deaths in Louisiana and wreaking billions of dollars in havoc across its multistate path. At Our Lady of the Lake, damage was minimal and its patients and staffers unharmed, an outcome that Jeff Mosely, one of the disaster preparedness Continued on 5
Neurologist investigates how to address strokes’ unequal racial toll By LISA EISENHAUER
Even as the overall mortality rate from strokes has fallen, the racial disparity in the toll has remained what Dr. John McBurney calls stubbornly high. McBurney sees that disparity daily as medical director of the Bon Secours St. Francis Stroke Program. The program is based in Greenville, South Carolina, one of eight southeastern states identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies as the Stroke Belt for their high incidence of strokes. “What we can see is that while there has been progress made for all racial and ethnic groups in the difference in the mortality rates — and that has been validated as a good proxy for the overall incidence of stroke — the disparity has not closed,” McBurney says. He has in recent years undertaken his own exploration of this lingering disparity and how to address it. His conclusions Continued on 4
Julius Hudson is flanked by his sister, Roberta Robinson, left, and wife, Amanda, outside of St. Francis Downtown hospital in Greenville, South Carolina, where he was recovering from a stroke. Hudson exercises and doesn’t smoke. His physician, Dr. John McBurney, is investigating the reasons for the higher than average incidence of stroke among African Americans.
MercyOne Dubuque promotes health equity for Pacific Islanders
After decades without insurance, many Marshallese regain Medicaid coverage By DALE SINGER
A diabetes education class hosted by the Pacific Islander Health Project in Dubuque, Iowa, is part of a community coalition’s health outreach efforts to a population that has higher than average rates of diabetes, cancer, hypertension and other chronic illness. MercyOne Dubuque Medical Center was instrumental in bringing the coalition together.
Natives of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean have reason to feel victimized by the U.S. government. Now, a coalition in Dubuque, Iowa, including MercyOne Dubuque Medical Center, part of Trinity Health, is building trust and trying to help make things right. After the United States gained control of the Marshall Islands from Japan in World War II, the U.S. tested biological weapons and detonated 67 nuclear bombs there between 1946 and 1958. According to the Los Angeles Times, bombs exploded “on, in and above” the islands leaving behind an “environmental catastrophe.” The nuclear contamination and the adverse health effects it caused remain a Continued on 7