About the project
Since May 2020 the management4health (m4h) COVID-19 Rapid Response Team is contributing to the fight against COVID-19 by providing remote advice for companies and hospitals worldwide – all of them supported by DEG Bank, part of the KfW Group.
In the framework of this program m4h provides online and tailored support to a regional hospital of an agricultural company in Nicaragua. This hospital serves more than 5000 employees, their families and around 50,000 people in the surrounding municipalities with its inpatient and outpatient clinical services.
COVID-19 hands-on and peer-to-peer advice, mentoring and coaching
Since May 2020, m4h conducts regular online sessions to advice and support the hospital doctors through a peer-to-peer coaching. The hospital director and chief medical officer, the company doctor and the human resources manager regularly attend the meetings; together they are responsible for the COVID-19 company and hospital prevention and action plan. m4h has engaged COVID-19-experts with hands-on experience in managing the crisis in European hospitals for this support project. They are e.g. chief medical officer, chief of human resources, infection prevention and control officers, occupational health & safety specialists and chief intensive care unit and patient management specialists.
COVID-19 vulnerability self-assessment
The starting point is the vulnerability self-assessment we provided to the hospital, followed by online Q&A sessions to further define the actions we jointly agreed on. Through the assessment the following issues were identified: shortages on PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), medication and medical equipment like respirators; diagnostic dilemmas, exacerbated by limited availability of PCR-testing; confusion about national treatment guidelines that were not up-to-date and not aligned with international medical evidence; a need for case-management assistance for their intensive care patients.
Tailored COVID-19 action plan
Based on the identified needs, m4h provided tailored guidelines on e.g. reuse of PPE material, and up-to-date and evidence based diagnostic guidelines, referencing best practice websites for use of their staff training; we compared the Nicaraguan national treatment guidelines with the guidelines of other exemplary COVID-19 leading countries and tailored it down to the hospital treatment protocol in a Q&A session with the client; we provide also real time case management assistance for their intensive care patients and set up weekly case-management follow up sessions.
Impact of COVID-19 preparedness and crisis program
With this support we empowered this company and hospital to better prepare and react on the many COVID-19 challenges it faces. Thanks to the collaboration with the m4h COVID-19 Rapid Response Team this important in- and outpatient local and regional health provider can better protect its workforce and better treat their patients despite shortages of material, medication and equipment; better detect, guide and treat suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases; better prevent COVID-19 spread in the company and community; better control COVID-19 disease of affected employees and patients, safeguard the company’s workforce and ongoing operations, and safe lives of their most severely threatened COVID-19 ward and intensive care patients. On top of these benefits, the hospital management and medical staff found their well-deserved pride and confidence in their hard work to respond to COVID-19 through the reassurance by their peers in Europe that went through the same crisis two months earlier.
