Gage Awards

Parkland Health & Hospital System
Parkland Health & Hospital System used analytical tools to monitor and respond to confirmed cases of COVID-19, and to target testing and vaccinations to underserved people in Dallas County, Texas. By late December 2020, Parkland had identified more than 34,500 positive COVID-19 cases and flagged more than 10,000 patients as high-risk to initiate outreach and care.

New York City Health and Hospitals
New York City Health and Hospitals responded to a shortage of palliative care employees by recruiting more than 400 tele-palliative medicine volunteers through a nationwide social media campaign. Of those, 64 physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants completed expedited credentialing and assisted with remote care consultations at five of the health system’s acute-care hospitals.

LAC+USC Medical Center
LAC+USC Medical Center, in Los Angeles, optimized patient outcomes and preserved critical acute-care access during the pandemic by designing and deploying its SAFE @ Home O2 program. The initiative enabled patients requiring low levels of oxygen support to be managed at home. Over the past year, LAC+USC Medical Center discharged on home oxygen more than 1,600 patients with COVID-19.

University Medical Center of El Paso
University Medical Center of El Paso piloted a program to allow adult family members to visit hospitalized patients once a week for two hours. Visitors were required to use hospital-provided personal protective equipment and a powered air-purifying respirator, at a cost of $250 each—the hospital’s only expense related to the program. The program has enhanced patients’ feeling of safety, and initial results point toward improved recovery rates for critically ill COVID-19 patients.

Grady Health System
Grady Health System, in Atlanta, organized student volunteers in an outreach call program to screen patients for COVID-19. The system used artificial intelligence to identify patients at highest risk of poor outcomes if they were to contract the coronavirus. To date, the students have made more than 4,600 patient calls, identifying in half the calls answered at least one health care need that required action and 20 percent with social needs.

UMASS Memorial Medical Center
UMASS Memorial Medical Center, in Worcester, Massachusetts, reduced the spread of COVID-19, minimized preventable deaths, and lowered use of its emergency department and ICU, with a multipronged, community-based campaign to target high-risk neighborhoods. The program deployed mobile care staff to answer questions in multiple languages, distribute PPE, and spearhead testing.

Boston Medical Center
To counter a drop in pediatric visits to the hospital as COVID-19 surged, Boston Medical Center launched the BMC Pediatrics Mobile Outreach Program. The program conducts home visits to provide vaccinations, mental health care, child care support, domestic violence assistance, and neonatal care. It also addresses patients’ unmet social needs, such as food insecurity. The program reaches more than 200 families each week.

San Joaquin General Hospital
San Joaquin General Hospital collaborated with county clinics to quickly transition to a community-based model of pop-up testing sites in areas with large numbers of people experiencing homelessness and migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. The initiative has conducted thousands of COVID-19 tests, including in areas with transportation barriers to testing, and prevented potential outbreaks among these at-risk populations.