How hospitals collaborated to save lives—and what they can learn moving forward

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Louis health care providers realized that they needed to work from the same facts. Whether it was hospitalizations, discharges, or available resources for treatment, they needed common data if they were going to successfully combat the virus and serve the public.

As cases and hospitalizations continued to climb and intensive care units were pressed for ample resources to treat and care for COVID patients, in April 2020, BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health, and St. Luke’s Hospital formed the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force. The task force enlisted St. Louis data scientists to create one data model for updates and analysis of information from which all the providers could work and plan.

Task force members said their goal was “slowing the transmission of COVID-19 and saving lives across the St. Louis region in partnership with local and state health departments, and our academic medical institutions, Saint Louis University and Washington University,” says Dr. Alexander Garza, the task force’s co-leader. “Data scientists were the unspoken gems of the task force. They did phenomenal work.”

Data sharing saved lives, Garza believes, because it helped health systems plan for and provide care about a new virus that had quickly spiraled into pandemic proportions. By sharing that information through press conferences, a Facebook page, and other channels, Garza says, the task force helped the public make informed decisions about prevention and treatment.

At press time in early June, U.S. COVID cases since the start of the pandemic totaled 84.9 million, according to a New York Times coronavirus tracker. More than 1 million Americans have died from the virus. In Missouri, 1.48 million cases of COVID have been reported since 2020, and 20,797 Missourians have died, according to the tracker.

“Data sharing between physicians and scientists is vital when dealing with new pathogens and diseases, as we all need to learn from each other,” says Dr. Sarah George, professor of infectious diseases at Saint Louis University. “For COVID, doctors on the coasts were seeing cases and treating patients before doctors in Missouri, so we learned from them what the disease looked like.”

Looking ahead, experts across the country say they hope the trend of data sharing continues. Philip Payne, director of Washington University’s Institute for Informatics, helped develop the data sharing model for the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force. Data sharing, he says, can serve as an “early warning system” by identifying regional and national epidemiological trends, including new COVID-19 variants, and helping health systems develop new mitigation strategies.

Today, data sharing continues for area hospital systems. “I learned that it is important to see the entire picture for the metropolitan area, rather than from a single health system perspective,” says Garza. “From a community standpoint, we gain insight from working together on health issues.”

Randi Foraker, the director of the Center for Population Health Informatics at the Washington University Institute for Informatics, was also among the data scientists working with the task force. There is a growing need, Foraker says, “to apply population health knowledge with technological solutions to data sharing to improve health in our region. Our work can be a catalyst for a robust community-wide dialogue on what steps can and should be taken to ensure that our local hospital systems can respond to this and future emergent public health crises.”