Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

6 INFECTION CONTROL Intermountain's blueprint for reshaping respiratory virus care in 2024 By Ashleigh Hollowell D espite rising respiratory infections nationwide, Kim Bennion, the enterprise director of research and respiratory care at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare, is optimistic about what 2024 may hold for respiratory care, thanks in-part to advances in technology like artificial intelligence. e advancements promise to streamline pulmonary care and could eventually be used to also monitor more acute respiratory conditions like COVID-19 or the flu. Her optimism for what the technology promises for respiratory care comes as the CDC reports an eighth consecutive week of increasing outpatient visits for respiratory viruses. In a single week alone — the most recent week of CDC data as of Dec. 23 — there were 29,059 hospitalizations for COVID-19 and 14,732 for the flu nationally, according to CDC data. Ms. Bennion had retired from a 47-year career in healthcare, but came out of retirement aer just two weeks when Intermountain received a $4 million grant to work on a project that would integrate AI technology with pulmonary metrics into an easy-to-use platform for clinicians. "Based on some preliminary research that we've done, I think this is going to revolutionize respiratory care," Ms. Bennion told Becker's. "We just want to do the right thing for chronic lung patients." e goal was to expand the capacity of pulmonary disease navigators who remotely monitor patients to handle more, provide increased 24/7 access to specialists, and get care at the right time in the right location at the lowest cost, she explained. So far, the platform has been able to increase the number of patients that can be remotely monitored from 50 per specialist to 250. e platform is also one Intermountain has used for diabetes care and heart failure with success. So further customizing it for pulmonary care only made sense, Ms. Bennion said. "We're going to provide patients with extremely timely care… we can view about 500 patients' info from a screen, and they'll show up as red, yellow, or green based on the cues of some specific metric," she said. "If their saturation falls to a certain level, they'll show up yellow, or they'll show up red, that says you know we need to get a hold of them right now. ey'll have this high touch personalized care." All information is relayed back to the patient's care team and primary care provider to make decisions about how to adjust care. While the platform now is only for certain pulmonary conditions, Ms. Bennion said further work in years to come could allow for monitoring more acute respiratory conditions like COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus and flu. "What we will never do is take the patient or the healthcare personnel — ultimately the human aspect out of that," she said. "All of the intelligence that we get, the physiologic monitoring prompts and data, has to be analyzed. Yes, artificial intelligence will help us, but you can't give that high touch personalized care by taking the human care provider out of the patient's life. at just doesn't work." Within the next year, Ms. Bennion hopes to have 2,000 patients on the new pulmonary platform for monitoring and continue research with the team working on the technology to eventually advocate for funding and possibly scale its use. n Hospital masking picks up steam By Mackenzie Bean M ore health systems have implemented mask rules in recent weeks amid an uptick in respiratory virus activity and growing concerns over potential capacity issues this winter. This virus season marks the first since the CDC loosened national mask guidelines, putting the onus on hospitals and health systems to independently determine when and how to implement masking policies, if at all. Hospital masking took many different forms this fall, with some organizations implementing blanket mandates for all patients, staff and visitors, and others taking a more flexible approach, limiting masking to certain patient care locations or stakeholders. Other systems opted not to bring back masks at all. COVID-19 admissions have risen more than 50% over the past four weeks, while flu admissions have jumped 200%, according to the CDC. Many emergency departments and intensive care units nationwide are feeling the strain. As such, more health systems are reinstating masking to help prevent additional virus admissions. Johnson City, Tenn.-based Ballad Health implemented mask rules for employees in clinical areas effective Dec. 21, according to NBC affiliate WCYB. Boston-based Dana- Farber Cancer Institute and Pittsburgh-based UPMC also implemented mask rules this week for all patients, staff and visitors. Earlier in December, BJC Healthcare in St. Louis reinstated mask rules for staff, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. n

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