When the pandemic first began to spike, many providers struggled to offer even the minimum of care to afflicted patients whose lives were in danger. Some doubtless chose to invest in new solutions to address the flood of COVID patients, but others hunkered down and used what they had on hand.
After a year plus of coping with COVID, however, healthcare leaders have had time to reflect on what they’ve done to date and what they should take away from the experience. One of the biggest lessons providers seem to have learned that in fighting this bug, they need to see their efforts as a marathon rather than a sprint. They’re getting a powerful reminder that tools in which they invest in today may be all that stands between them and catastrophic future events.
As they’ve gotten a better handle on the pandemic, health leaders have identified several technologies they have in-house that have helped them scale up for the longer term. For example, Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer and Sonal Patel, chief customer success officer at Lyniate, shared with us that customers are using their interoperability solutions to integrate telehealth with EHRs and billing tools within virtual care.
Lyniate also saw its customers extend their existing infrastructure. Along with adding new endpoints for sending and receiving data, some organizations tapped into previously unused capabilities in their interoperability platform. For example, some IT departments are managing communication about negative COVID tests by email rather than via phone.
Andy Figallo, VP of partner success with eVideon, has also found that customers were digging deeper into the capabilities of existing technology. Many healthcare leaders set a priority of keeping patients, families, and care teams virtually informed, engaged, and accessible. Plus, they prioritized technology that could execute on a condensed timeline.
Then, there’s AVIA customer Piedmont Health, whose virtual health efforts were already underway when the pandemic hit. According to Tiwi Oye, director of client relations and corporate strategy, when the pandemic hit Piedmont was already well into the process of bringing its virtual care platform to its 11 hospitals, 35 action care centers, 555 physician practice centers and 25 QuickCare locations.
“We are no longer thinking about virtual health as an independent silo, but rather as an enabler of success across the entire organization,” said Patrick Cossart, telehealth program manager at Piedmont.
Obviously, despite each of the above successes at leveraging existing technologies, healthcare organizations still need to keep their eyes on emerging tech which can change the game for the better. However, the above COVID experiences demonstrate how much value is embedded in existing infrastructure that many just haven’t chosen to leverage in their organization. It seems clear that providers can wrestle more out of pre-COVID plans and technologies than they expected.
Perhaps the most important lesson learned here is that providers need to bulletproof their infrastructure plans early in the game. Then, when unusual – but inevitable – stresses hit the network, health leaders will have everything they need to keep control.
