OAHHS Hospital Voice Fall/Winter 2020

23 Fall/Winter 2020 very diligent about preserving what we had. We tried to learn lessons from day one, from those who had experienced this before us, so that we could make the best decisions possible. From that, we supported the gover- nor’s decision to pause elective surgeries to conserve PPE for our caregivers who were responding to COVID-19. That was a difficult decision, that had absolutely signifi- cant, huge, massive financial impact on our institutions. But we didn’t make the decision because of finan- cial impacts, we did it because it was the right thing to do at that time given what we knew. Since then, we have found that we can keep employ- ees safe using PPE conservation strategies. We’re very confident in that now. We’re confident in the safety of our workforce, and we’ve been able to resume necessary care for Oregonians. We’ve been learning lessons all the way through this. One of the challenges of a pandemic is so much is unknown, and you have to assimilate a lot of informa- tion and make decisions really quickly in order to have the best outcome for your community. In some cases we may look back and say we would have made a different decision. In other cases we are absolutely confident that we made the right choice. But overall I think it was, again, based on the informa- tion at the time, the right decision. Now we know we can keep our workforce safe and it is absolutely critical that people can continue to get care because one of the things we saw when we delayed elective surger- ies is that people put off necessary care and sometimes their outcomes were worse. Oregon’s been very fortunate in not having lost any rural hospitals in the last few years. What’s the revenue picture now, and how important has the federal aid been? If you would have asked me this question in May I would have said the situation is dire. We had some hospitals very close to the brink of financial insolvency during that time frame. Since then, federal funding has come through, some general funding for all hospitals and then some specific funding just for those rural hospitals that has helped tremendously. So I would not say that anyone’s on the brink of closure or on the brink of financial insol- vency right now, but this is not over, and we’re going to continue to take the pulse of the financial health of our hospitals moving forward, because we don’t know what the fall is going to bring. We do know that things have improved dramatically from where we were in April and May, but it’s too early to declare victory and to say that hospitals are going to be just fine. We’ll see what the coming months bring and be in a better position to make that assess- ment. Hospitals are places where care is delivered to those who need it, but during a pandemic hospitals are sources of information as they always are, and data, the sort of data the state needs to One of the challenges of a pandemic is so much is unknown, and you have to assimilate a lot of information and make decisions really quickly in order to have the best outcome for your community. continues 