While many patients may have been concerned to receive an organ transplant during COVID-19, Greg Pruitt felt comfortable receiving a heart transplant from Largo Medical Center, an HCA Healthcare-affiliated facility. As the Largo Medical Center took enhanced precautions throughout the facility, Greg Pruitt observed increased safety measures that made his decision to receive the transplant quick and easy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) May 2020 Hiring Situation surprised economists, revealing that 2.5 million jobs were regained last month, significantly higher than the 7.5 million job loss anticipated. The gains come as the economy has begun to open up across the country and the initial economic shock of COVID-19 appears to have stabilized. That said, many economists still believe the road to economic recovery will be long. The unemployment rate edged down to 13.3%. 

Within the healthcare sector, 312,400 jobs returned, with gains seen primarily in offices of physicians, healthcare practitioners and dentists. Jobs within ambulatory care settings grew by 375,700, however hospital payrolls fell by 26,700.

As the nation continues to face the largest economic crisis in almost a century, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) April 2020 Hiring Situation revealed that the economy lost 20.5 million jobs last month, leading the unemployment rate to skyrocket to 14.7%. This is the highest rate seen since World War 2. The data reflects the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it.

Amid the worst public health crisis in American history, more than 1.4 million healthcare jobs were lost last month, primarily in ambulatory healthcare services as dental and physician offices closed and elective surgeries came to a halt (-1.2M). Hospital payrolls were down 139,000.

The Report also revealed that if millions of Americans who have been furloughed and expect to return to their jobs are counted, the jobless rate would have almost 5 percentage points higher at nearly 20%.

In the seven weeks since the virus shut down much of the U.S. economy, more than 33 million people have applied for unemployment benefits, as the numbers continue to grow by several million a week.

Everyone can use a comforting friend or a word of encouragement during the pandemic. As these unprecedented times lead to increased loneliness and anxiety, the fight to overcome COVID-19 is better with a companion by your side. For healthcare workers at HCA Healthcare's Rose Medical Center, their companion just happens to be a one-year-old Labrador.

Although COVID-19 has separated us, the virus has also caused us to stand firm and grow closer together. At the heart of what we do, we strive to take care of people, both patients and employees. In an effort to reduce the hardships produced by COVID-19, The Frist Foundation has donated $1 million to support colleagues affected by the COVID-19 to the HCA Healthcare Hope Fund.

Our parent company, HCA Healthcare is teaming up with Google Cloud and SADA to launch a data portal for the COVID-19 pandemic. The open data platform will help accelerate analysis and response by aggregating data on ICU bed and ventilator utilization, testing results, and total number of patient visits to America’s hospital systems. 

HCA Healthcare is proud to collaborate with Google Cloud on the announcement of the COVID-19 National Response Portal, an open data platform built and operated by SADA. Running on Google Cloud, the platform is intended to promote data-sharing about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it is spreading in an effort to help hospitals and communities prepare and respond.

“COVID-19 presents a unique and significant challenge to healthcare providers, and collaboration and coordination is more important than ever to help ensure the best possible response,” said Dr. Edmund Jackson, HCA Healthcare’s chief data officer. “While COVID-19 has driven us apart physically, we will respond to it by coming together digitally. We are proud to work alongside Google Cloud to create a platform to help address this urgent public health challenge.”

The COVID-19 National Response Portal is intended to enable healthcare providers across the country to safely share and display anonymous, aggregated metrics from hospital systems into a single platform to show a complete and real-time view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data can be submitted each day from hospital systems across the United States and will be focused on metrics such as:

• ICU bed supply and utilization;
• ventilator supply and utilization;
• total numbers of positive, negative, and pending COVID-19 test results;
• and total numbers of healthy patients who have been discharged.

The platform will also have the ability to leverage publicly available datasets, such as data on local shelter-in-place policies, and traffic or mobility patterns, to help shed light on how public behaviors and policies may impact the spread of COVID-19.

“Healthcare organizations need access to accurate and timely information around the country to plan for care and respond to COVID-19,” said Philip Moyer, Vice President, Industry Sales at Google Cloud. “We’re proud to team up with HCA Healthcare and SADA in the launch of this important new data resource for care providers on the front lines.”

“As healthcare providers, we are all battling the same crisis,” said Michael Wargo, vice president of emergency preparedness at HCA Healthcare. “However, we are being faced with COVID-19 at different times and levels of severity. By pooling our data into one cohesive platform, we can share best practices to better prepare communities across the country for this unprecedented pandemic.”

As a learning health system, HCA Healthcare uses data from approximately 35 million annual patient encounters to improve care through research and innovation. HCA Healthcare, which will provide statistical data from its 185 hospitals, structured in a manner to comply with HIPAA and other applicable restrictions, has invited groups representing approximately 4,000 hospitals across the country to join and share data on the platform.

HCA Healthcare, SADA and Google Cloud are in the process of sharing additional details and seeking to onboard other hospitals. The platform is expected to go live to the public next week.

Hospitals interested in learning more and submitting data should visit onboarding.nationalresponseportal.com.

The CDC has issued a recommendation for citizens to use cloth face coverings in “public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies), especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

This is another step to help reduce the potential transmission of COVID-19, especially from people who show no symptoms.

We kindly remind members of our community to use non-medical reusable masks. Please do your part to help make sure medical grade masks stay in the hands of our healthcare professionals and first responders as they continue caring during COVID-19.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) March 2020 Hiring Situation confirmed what we already suspected: COVID-19 made a tremendous impact on job growth and hiring in March. The U.S. economy lost 701,000 jobs and the unemployment rate jumped to 4.4%, up from a half-century low of 3.5% in February. This ended the decade-long record of employment growth marking the first and steepest decline in payrolls since the Great Recession. 

The strict measures put in place to help contain the spread of the virus have left many businesses shuttered with the majority of Americans ordered to stay at home outside of essential workers, which include our important healthcare workers on the front lines fighting the virus. 

Healthcare lost 42,500 jobs last month, with the vast majority within ambulatory care (-40,700). Hospital job growth was virtually flat. The healthcare unemployment rate grew from 2.2% in February to 2.8% in March. Over the prior 12 months, health care employment had grown by 374,000. 

The U.S. has the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, with more than 245K people infected, according to the latest Johns Hopkins University data available at this time.  

Job growth remained robust throughout the month of February, adding 273,000 new jobs amid economic fears of the potential Coronavirus (COVID19) impact. The BLS Economic Situation also reported that unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 3.5% last month. Healthcare remained a job growth engine, adding 31,600 new jobs. Healthcare has added 368,000 new jobs in the last 12 months.

If you are interested in exploring new career opportunities with HealthTrust Workforce Solutions, please click the button below to browse our available jobs.

Congratulations to the Menorah Health 3 North and Med/Oncology teams on earning HealthTrust's first DAISY TEAM Award! Menorah Medical Center is located in Overland Park, just outside of Kansas City. 

The Menorah Health teams were nominated for the DAISY Award for kind, compassionate and coordinated care they delivered to a cancer patient and her son, who happens to be a business partner of HealthTrust's StaRN Nurse Training Program.  

The nursing teams consist of:

Kristy Veasman, Alicia Hafley, Michelle Johnson, Autumn Ayers, Connie Schwartz. Alivn Tapang, Curtis Alldredge, Judy Marino, Aimee Clausen, Amanda Singhara, Melissa Doyal and Dee Smith-Kisner.

You can read the nomination in full below: