Empowering Secure Remote Work in Healthcare
3rd September 2020
The last six months have changed everything that we know about work – especially remote work.
According to a recent study by PwC, 54% of CFOs say their organizations will make remote work a permanent option for roles that allow it. 87% said that their organization’s highest focus is on changing workplace safety measures and requirements as they transition back to the workplace. And seventy two percent (72%) expect greater resilience and agility as by-products of the pandemic.
As companies worldwide and across industries make remote work common practice, we in healthcare are finding ways to safely empower non-clinical staff to work remotely.
With healthcare, of course, a hospital or clinic cannot go completely virtual. By nature, some care must be delivered in-person. Lifesaving procedures and emergency services can’t be done remotely.
Bringing clinicians and care teams together, wherever they are.
For non-clinical staff, how can you enable remote work, minimizing the number of operations staffs in your hospital or clinic and helping to reduce the possibility of transmission? You need remote, secure connectivity into the operational domain to empower workers to be productive anywhere.
For your clinicians and care teams, you need to be able to conduct live video calls, trainings and large-scale broadcasts to bring teams together. With Webex Meetings and Webex Teams, you can securely collaborate, even when you cannot be in the same room.
The University of Maryland Medical System connected 28,000 employees across 13 hospitals and 5,000 homes in just 5 days.
Virtual triage makes connections, regardless of location.
You need to improve patient experience and care coordination, enable emergency triage response, provide a proactive approach to chronic care patient engagement and deliver a seamless agent experience. And, today, you need to do it remotely.
In many cases, your contact centre agents are your patients’ first point of contact, meaning it’s key to ensure your agents can work from wherever they are to quickly and efficiently service your patients.
Tele-health improves schedule density, and blends in-person and virtual appointments seamlessly.
Even during a pandemic, patients still need to meet and consult with their physicians. Whether it’s managing a chronic condition, attending yearly appointments or meeting with a psychiatrist, some appointments cannot be postponed. While certain clinical appointments need to be in person, others can be virtual.
Tele-health and virtual visits provide care at a distance through secure voice and video technology – which improves patient access to care and clinician productivity. Physicians can launch Webex video visits directly from within the electronic health or medical record, include multiple care team stakeholders on the call and address social distancing demands. Plus, tele-health helps with schedule density so that clinicians can blend in-person and virtual appointments seamlessly, minimise contact with patients and spend less time waiting for patients to arrive.
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that change is constantly redefining our landscape. Healthcare organisations were faced with changes so great and so fast, that for so many, there is no “normal” to return to.
Now is the time to look beyond “normal” and the “new normal,” and embrace the future with the organisational resilience to not just recover and adapt in the face of change, but truly thrive.
