Follow along with our new blog series #HealthcareNow and #PublicSectorNow, where we’ll address healthcare innovation around the world and how to maintain business continuity in today’s health climate. 

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. Eighty seven percent (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. For essential clinical staff and the patients that they serve, we help create a trusted care delivery workplace, while helping your health systems maintain continuity of care.

Bringing clinicians and care teams together, wherever they are.

We help you boost productivity across your organization and manage business and clinical continuity during crisis with collaboration that is multi-disciplinary across departments and the secure remote worker community.

For non-clinical staff, how can you enable remote work, minimizing the number of operations staff 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.

Want to see how one healthcare organization did it? 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 center 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.

Want to see a Cisco contact center in action? See how Mercy Virtual gained an additional 6 hours a day to spend with patients because of faster pickups and patient hold times.

Telehealth 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.

Telehealth 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, telehealth helps with schedule density so that clinicians can blend in-person and virtual appointments seamlessly, minimize contact with patients and spend less time waiting for patients to arrive.

See how The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health increased their telehealth visits by 750% in a one-month period this year.

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If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that change is constantly redefining our landscape. Healthcare organizations 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 organizational resilience to not just recover and adapt in the face of change, but truly thrive.