Opposite of Cohorting

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Terry. I’m calling from Traverse City, Michigan.

Hi, Terry. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I work in healthcare, and as you can imagine, shortly after the start of the new year, we started getting very busy doing work related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And in March, it really started to accelerate. I started to work with a team of dedicated clinical leaders who have oversight of some of the rapidly changing clinical practices related to COVID-19.

And so early on in this pandemic, our organization made a really smart decision to regionalize some of the care. And we started to, we created a plan to cohort patients. And cohort them regionally means that they’ll go to certain facilities and not to others. And it made sense because it’s a best practice to reduce harm and help us centralize care so we’re good stewards of preserving our critical resources.

And so that was really good and very effective, and we flattened the curve. But we also know we’re in this for the long haul.

And so we started having conversations about the new normal, as people like to refer to it. And so we went back to that cohorting discussion and talked about whether or not we would decohort. But we also knew decohorting is not really a word.

So we don’t really know what the opposite of cohorting is. And that brought us around to you and your smart listeners as we were striving for a word about decohorting.

So to clarify, cohorting is when patients with the same infectious disease are treated either in the same ward or the same facility because they require the same kind of services, and it means that the same medical professionals can treat them and they kind of won’t be exposing as many other professionals to the same kind of risks, right? Something like that?

Yes. Yep. That’s correct. It lets that team work closely together and then they can share learning and provide the best care.

And so why don’t you like decohorting? So decohorting would be to somebody has gone through treatment, they seem to be on a path to recovery, and now they can be removed from that cohort.

A cohort being a group of people who share common characteristics, right?

That’s correct. We like the idea and we’d like to get back to that when patients still be discharged.

But we’re thinking, you know, because we’ll have this disease for a long time until we’re able to have it totally under control, we at some point might go back to having hospitals serve everyone.

And so that’s where the struggle was. It’s like, is it decohorting? We didn’t feel like it was a word that captured what we wanted to do.

So what do you say instead of decohorting? Because decohorting is, do you want a word that the public can use, or are you looking for a word for medical professionals?

Probably mostly it would be medical professionals, and although I’m surprised at the words that have become a part of general vernacular that used to be just healthcare words that are now out there in the public.

You know, I might go for something that is a little bit more like normalization of care or something like that that suggests stabilization of the system.

The system has reached perfect capacity or something like that, or optimal capacity or optimal care, something like that.

Yes, yes, I like that.

Terry, I was struck from the very beginning about what you said about being very busy and also the fact that decohorting sort of arose organically, it seems, among people who are extremely busy.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t have such a problem with the word decohorting, actually.

Decohorting?

Yeah.

I mean, it packs a whole lot of history and information into one word.

That’s true.

Yeah, and it makes sense to us now because we’ve been using cohorting so much that decohorting makes sense.

Just like some words that we would never use generally, we’re using all the time in health care. You hear people talking about donning and doffing their personal protective equipment.

And they certainly don’t don anything else, but that’s literally what they say. I’m going to don my PPE. I’m going to dock my PPE.

So that has been interesting, watching this evolution of language.

Oh, I’ll bet. In our industry.

I feel a little bit like an outsider here. You mentioned, Terry, the members of the general public that have worked hard to educate themselves in this time of pandemic.

And I’m one of those people, but I still only have the surface knowledge, the barest fraction of what you professionals have. So I feel a little unqualified to give you a better choice than that.

So I think what I’d like to hear is from our listeners who work in health care, who maybe already have a word for this, Terry, because they’ve gone through it before you.

They’re in another state or another country, another part of the world where they’ve passed through this stage already. Maybe they have a word that they can lend you or lend their other medical professionals.

I think that would be terrific because it would be nice to all be speaking the same language, but we need to learn from each other.

I think so, too.

Yeah, I’m delighted. And thank you very much for working the front lines, and thank you for sharing your experience with us. I really appreciate it.

Oh, it’s our pleasure. This is our community, and we are here to take care of each other.

I think we’ll hear a lot of people talking about that in these uncertain times. We’re in it together.

Yeah, take care of yourself, too.

Okay.

Thank you.

We will.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, Terry. Call us again sometime. Be well.

Will do.

Bye-bye.

What do you call it when you no longer need to put patients in cohorts in your area, in your region, in your part of the world? Let us know, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org. Or we invite healthcare professionals to let us know on Twitter @wayword.