Oregon Governance & Partners

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the state of Oregon.  It became apparent that the state's health system was going face a significant demand for bed capacity as it responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Data was critical in the early days of Oregon's response and we had limited insight into total hospital bad capacity and critical resource supply in Oregon.  

Realizing the need to coordinate quickly across the state's hospitals and health systems, under the leadership of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), a group of health system executives agreed to standup a real-time bed capacity system using the GE Healthcare "command center" technology as a foundation.  There was agreement among this group and the Oregon Capacity System (OCS) was launched.  It quickly became a useful tool for providers and the state of Oregon in understanding hospital capacity in real-time by emergency response region.  In a couple of months time we had nearly 100% of Oregon's hospitals participating.

Given the early success and the clear need for an enhanced statewide system, using the lessons we have all learned from the pandemic, it was decided to formalize the Oregon Capacity System under Apprise Health Insights, the data and analytics subsidiary of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.  In September of 2021, Apprise formally took over the management and governance of the Oregon Capacity System.  The vision for this statewide tool, the first in the country, is to develop a collaborative process with shared governance to bring additional data streams into the OCS.  In early 2022, we added increased bed tracking functionality, infectious disease tracking by bed, PPE inventory tracking, and the addition of real-time emergency room capacity by hospital.

In July 2022, the Apprise Health Insights Board of Directors formally adopted a statewide, shared governance charter to guide to future operations and direction of OCS.

This project got initial funding from ASPR/HHS as part of grant funds that were provided to hospital associations to assist with early COVID-19 response.  For more information you can visit: https://aspr.hhs.gov/Pages/Home.aspx