healthsystemCIO features a Q&A with Jamie Nelson, senior vice president, chief information officer at HSS, who discussed how HSS was able to respond during the COVID-19 pandemic, and key lessons learned.

From an IT perspective technology was put into place at HSS to support clinicians who were providing care. Rather than trying to bring IT staff back to the hospital when COVID-19 numbers dipped, Nelson opted to extend the remote work option, both to ensure public safety and help working parents. Additionally, telehealth visits played an integral role. “We did more than 100,000 telehealth visits in 2020; the year before, I think we did 500. There was an operational team really affecting it, but the IT work behind the scenes was just incredible. It was things like making sure we had appropriate platforms for live streams with our administration — our CEO held livestreams every week — with a communication platform that could stand up to the vagaries of having that many people on all at once, which we just weren’t used to. And so it was a lot of very hard work,” explained Nelson. She continued, “Now I think we’re in much better shape from an IT perspective, because things like working from home and the order sets we would need — those things were all there, but we do not think we’ll have to take on COVID patients again.”

Nelson added, “We had a great organization beforehand, this just enhanced what we’re doing. We ramped up our help desk; we did all sorts of things to improve our processes. I think the real lesson learned was to make sure we have a playbook. There are steps to what we did and how we did it; and so if we run into the situation again, there’s a playbook.”

Read the full article at Healthsystemcio.com.