Covid Continues To Dominate Business of Cook County Health

Cook County Health Board Meeting - September 25, 2020

The only action items were related to procurement but the board went into a closed session. 

• The public speaker testimony was all from Stroger employees and dealt with the handling of COVID-19. SEIU employees were laid off in the spring and many of their duties were transferred to the nurses. Neither group feels this is fair. The service employees want their hours back, sufficient PPE and additional training to do their jobs. The nurses want to do only nursing work. They all want hazard pay and PPE needed to do their jobs. 
• The board thanked the departing board members and welcomed Directors Garza and Curry. The new directors introduced themselves and spoke about their professional backgrounds. Director Richardson-Lowry stayed on for this meeting.

Committee Reports:

• Most of the committee reports addressed the changes made by the pandemic, including rule changes that were made to accommodate telemedicine and the financial effects.
• The quality committee spoke about changing the HgA1C indicator to include only patients that were seen twice in the last year.  (The HgA1C is a measure of how well blood glucose is controlled. Instead of a snapshot like a glucose level it takes into account 3 months of levels.)
• The contract metrics on women and minority owned businesses were not good this summer, possibly COVID related. YTD shows a surplus of revenue of $119 million but that includes $153 million received from the CARES act. 

​Interim CEO, Debra Carey reported: 

• that the hospital is encouraging patients to complete their census forms;
• and In the ER, they are helping people register to vote using the TurboVote platform via the patient’s phones.
  
• The Cook County jail after having a rough time with COVID is now down to a 0.5% positivity rate. 
• All employees are being encouraged to receive flu shots in advance of an expected difficult winter.
• The ER will be using a combined flu/COVID swab test. 
• he big concern is the possibility of the ACA being struck down in the Supreme Court. This will have an approximately $600 million dollar negative impact on the bottom line.

 
Items to Watch for in the Future:

• The future of the ACA or a replacement.
• Shortage and cost of PPE.
• Women and minority owned business contracts. 

Observer:  Lisa Slankard                                       Length of Meeting:  2 and 3/4 hours