moments. And oftentimes there fun and exciting. Sometimes they

are hard and scary.

I think we have a combination of that happening right now.

As all of you know, we are beginning to see real evidence

that COVID-19, the Novel Coronavirus, has taken root in

the United States. An activity is heating up here in Utah.

We, as an organization are

really ready. To take care of these patients and take care of

our communities by the opportunity with Sue Roble

yesterday to go to the EP you down to Intermountain Medical

Center and boy was I proud of the work that I saw being done

down there. Highly motivated caregivers, smart, thoughtful on

point selfless. And really eager to serve each other and to serve

the patients in the community.

This is a fast moving, rapidly

evolving situation. And we don't know all the answers yet, but

what we do know is we're always going to put our patients 1st

and we're always going to put

our caregivers 1st. And that we're going to do absolutely

everything we can to serve both of those groups as thoroughly

and thoughtfully as possible.

We're opening a dialogue with

you today. We are going to share with you the situation as it

exists right now and we're going to anticipate that we're going

to get an opportunity to speak with you on a regular basis over

the next weeks and months, because this is going to be a

marathon, not a Sprint.

I'm completely confident.

That whatever pops up Intermountain will have a

coordinated, thoughtful and team

oriented response. And even if tough things happen, we're

going to look for good to come from this so that we can

serve better in the future.

You're going to hear from Blair Kent now administrator

at Intermountain Medical Center who is going to bring

you up to speed on the operational implications of

what's going on right now and our preparedness. So Blair.

Thanks, Marc is everyone's aware we had our patient admitted last

Friday, but our preparation for that moment didn't start. Last

week we had almost 5 years of advanced preparation. We had

taken advantage many years ago. Intermountain was very

thoughtful and diligent in trying to create a vision of how

do we treat people that have unique situations conditions. So

as this. GPU is designed and built. There were guiding

principles that I still think are fundamental to who we are.

We were focused on safety of the patients or caregivers and

community and the capacity to provide quality care regardless

of this unique and freestanding unit. So about 4 years ago the

unit was completed. It was designed in an incredible way to

accommodate situations. Just like this, we were able to have

great physician leadership.

And clinical leadership with our nurses. So we've been able to

have physicians and nurses trained well in advance, so

Luckily, and strategically, that when we got the notification,

everyone sprung into action in a really fluid manner. Our

Engineering Department, who has had stewardship over the past 4

years, were able to immediately step in and the facility they've

been able to maintain over the past 4 years was readily

available. We were able to turn everything on and start getting

to go. In preparation for the receiving of this patient with

minor tweaks and minor changes, then immediately following that

we were able to mobilize all of the unique clinical aspects from

our nursing to pharmacy and having them come together to

physically be in this unit and start identifying what's it

going to look like and feel like when our patients here, what are

the handoffs? What are the things in the resources we need?

So over the course of that time, we're able to set that unit up

fairly quickly and thoroughly.

Our commitment, which we've been for years in doing our daily

safety huddles. We anticipated things really well physically.

We've had to tweak things, maybe little things here and there

from a communication standpoint, something as maybe insignificant

as a TV, the number of stations to how we communicate through

the glass, and then some things like food services. How do we

deliver, and where do we deliver the food? So overall it has been

a great success. The caregivers.

Are well trained, we are well stocked an supplied to do

exactly what we're doing. This isn't a unique challenge for us,

nor is it something that we're not prepared for. This has been

years in the preparing and planning and now we're doing

what we're trained to do. So the caregivers are excited. There is

an energy with the nurse. Is there an through our huddle

process? We're learning on a daily basis so the patients at

the right place with the right time with the right people and

at the right time.

So Doctor Phillips.

So as Blair said, we we've had a really great opportunity in a

very planned fashion to introduce our workforce in our

health system to COVID-19. And the situation is changing very,

very fast. We're learning kind of on the fly as information

comes in, both from the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, and from the Utah Department of Health. And so

they're updating guidance.

Clinical standards an we are keeping pace with them to be

sure that the practice that we have in our heads in our ICU's,

across our system wherever a patient comes, we're ready to

provide what is the standard today. I'll also share with you

that the standard today may not be the standard tomorrow or 2

days from now. We're learning. If you've kept an eye on the

news, it's an hour goes by or 7:00 o'clock. Tonight will know

something different an.

We're really doing our best to keep pace with that. what I

would like you all to know is that are your leaders. Your

managers are putting your safety as a caregiver 1st.

We're carrying about you so that you can care for our patients

for your families and your

communities. Interesting Lee. Initially we as you've probably

seen in the news, we've been able to identify risk and we'll

talk about that others here in a moment through where you've been

right. Where's your travel? Where have you been in China?

Have you been in Italy? And what we're finding over the weekend,

for example, is that that's only getting us part of the way

there, right? So, as we've seen, what's happened in Washington

state and an each day? I think we'll see something different.

So travel history is helping us, but it's probably that's

probably not going to.

Last, for very long we're going to find ourselves with direct

community spread and that some of what we're seeing in

Washington state now. And that's going to make it a little harder

to know who's at risk and so bear with us. We're going to

give you every guidance that is available to us, and we're going

to kind of take a ride here that the country hasn't been through

in the world hasn't been through

in awhile. We are learning were learning organization. We are

caring for you and our patients and as the guidance changes were

present for you, please know that we have a website that's

available internally as well. the CDC an the Utah Department

of Health have sites for you to go out an care for yourself as

well as we're going to update for you as caregivers. What we

know in the moment and so please use that and the communications

team is going to stay all over

this. And as Marc said, this will be a continuing dialogue,

both with things like this as well as written material that

will have available for you. So we're informed were staying

connected so that we can help you serve our patients. I'm

going to turn it over to Eddie Stenehjem so he can share a

little bit about how we can be members of the community and

what we need to do.

Thanks, Shannon, thank you all for being here. As we know COVID-19

is caused by a coronavirus in coronavirus causes the

common cold we've all had coronaviruses in this room and the

good news is we know a lot about the science of coronaviruses,

but this is a new coronavirus. It's novel and we're learning

everyday about the transmission of this virus. We will learn

more in the weeks and days that come as test become available as

we start testing our community and communities in Washington,

Oregon. Start testing more

broadly. And we will be able to give that information to you

into our caregivers and to our patients and communities. Right

now, there is no treatment, aside from supportive care for

this infection. Fortunately, the vast majority of people that get

this infection do quite well. We want to ensure that we can care

for those patients, though that don't do well. Vaccine studies

are currently on going and enrolling. In addition to

treatment studies for randomized control trials are certainly on

going as well. Intermountain will be involved as we can in

those and keep you updated.

On current treatments that we

can provide. Like cold and flu viruses, this virus transmits on

droplets infected droplets that are generated when week off and

we sneeze the way people become infected is those droplets are

directly inserted to somebody's eyes, nose or mouth during a

cough or sneeze. Otherwise they can cough and it can land on an

inanimate object. A counter or a kitchen appliance and

then we can touch that and then we take that and we put it into

our face and we can get infected that way. So there's many ways

we can prevent community transmission. Simple things that

we can do, not only in our

hospitals. But also in our communities the first and

foremost is easy it's hand washing we want to ensure that

we are washing our hands consistently and so when we

touch those infected areas we're disinfecting our hands by hand

washing and you will see all the leaders be doing that routinely

and this is the new normal to be doing this often In addition we

want to avoid touching our face it's easy to say but very hard

to do but avoid touching ones eyes nose and mouth to really

decrease that transmission of the more common things that are

happening right now in Utah

which include. Influenza.

We wanted to make sure that people that when they are sick

and coughing and sneezing were coughing into our elbow were

coughing into a tissue we're avoiding infecting our

environment as much as we can.

We also want to make sure we clean frequently in the

environment using disinfectants not only in our home but also at

our workplace and in acute care settings as well you may have

seen some coverage about a shortage of masks in different

environments in different communities right now in Utah

and definitely within Intermountain we do not have a

shortage of masks we have them aplenty but keep in mind we

don't recommend wearing masks in the community we are not at that

point yet in fact there is some recent data suggests that

there's potentially higher risk for people that wear masks.

If you're touching them and ask masks and manipulating the

massacre also touching your face so we don't recommend that at

this time? In addition as a precautionary method we would

recommend using non handshake methods to greet one another we

can do fist bumps we can do elbow smashes or we can just

greet each other with a simple hello it's a precautionary

method but that's a completely acceptable here within

Intermountain as leaders and

also as caregivers. Bottom line is we're here to protect

the community or caregivers in our patients and we will keep

you updated as we go turn it over to Rebecca.

Thanks Eddie so there's some things that each of us can do

right now to make sure that we're ready for what's coming

our way the first thing is we should be prepared at home so

keep basic supplies like food your medicines vitamins

essential items on stock at home be ready for that Additionally

we want to make sure that everyone in your family and your

relatives who live with you know how do things like wash your

hands well wash them appropriately keep your avoid

touching your face many of the things that Eddie just shared

with us today. Are the same things that our family and our