Baycare Health System sees transformational technology as the road to COVID-19 recovery

Photo: Emir Memedovski/Getty Images

When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck in 2020, there were many challenges facing hospitals and health systems. One was providing the right care to the right patient at the right time.

Central Florida's Baycare Health System addressed this challenge by working with their suppliers for a successful rapid rollout of enhanced workflows. It also introduced virtual visits and online screening tools, utilized a statewide dashboard for surveillance, compiled information regarding community assistance, developed an intubation tool to protect providers, and engaged in mass workforce realignment.

The implementation of these technologies presented a challenge in and of itself, but in meeting this challenge, the health system's leaders believe they have found a path forward, establishing the steps to financial recovery from the public health crisis.

Dr. Alan Weiss, chief medical information officer and vice president of Baycare, will discuss these efforts at the HIMSS21 annual conference in Las Vegas, August 10 in Lido 3104 at the Venetian in a session entitled "Response to COVID-19 and Next Steps to Recovery."

WHAT'S THE IMPACT?

Though Baycare had considered the implementation of these technologies for some time, COVID-19 was the major impetus for the sped-up implementation.

"We had in place telemedicine for years, but its uptake was low due to lack of payment parity with in-office visits," said Weiss. "With the pandemic, this situation changed and we quickly ramped up this approach. Similarly, we had been using chatbots before COVID, (and) we quickly designed additional chatbots for the infection to help offload from our overloaded nurse triage line."

Among the lessons learned during this process was the importance of creating a crisis governance structure with streamlined decision-making. There were a lot of decisions that had to be made very quickly – many with technology – and Baycare needed to track and follow up appropriately.

Similarly, the health system had to prioritize EHR work for COVID-19 above other requests, while also continuing normal EHR-related activities.

"That forced us into an agile method approach to handle the chaos," said Weiss.

Also, the financial impact of the coronavirus on the organization, and its overall disruption, was both unprecedented and unpredictable. That forced Baycare to respond in new ways to reduce costs and tackle inefficiencies. Those efforts were in place prior to the pandemic, but the spread of the virus accelerated them significantly.

One of the more transformational changes Baycare made was in allowing employees to work from home. Prior to the pandemic, the health system had explored the idea of allowing employees to work from home one day a week, but when lockdown measures and social distancing protocols went into effect, these efforts kicked into overdrive.

"Like most organizations, we sent the majority of the workforce to work from home," said Weiss. "The success of that effort has led us to believe that many of those people will continue to work from home permanently, including about 60 to 70% of our IT staff. The challenge is, how do we maintain culture and develop teamwork in this new remote environment?"

If there's a satisfactory answer to that question, it likely lies within the streamlining of decision-making via Baycare's new governance structure. The change allowed staff to work faster and respond more quickly to challenges – signaling an agile approach that will prove all too important to the health system's ultimate financial recovery.

"The number of EHR-related requests were huge and we had to keep the team focused and working quickly on issues," said Weiss. "I believe our approach in improving quality while reducing costs and increasing efficiency is truly exemplary."

THE LARGER TREND

With scores of Americans getting vaccinated by the day, hospitals are slowly allowing themselves to feel optimistic about their financial recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. But even in the best-case scenario, 39% of hospitals will likely have negative operating margins in 2021, according to a March Kaufman Hall report.

By the end of the year, hospital margins could be 10-80% below pre-pandemic levels, the data showed. Under a more pessimistic – and realistic – scenario, recovery does not begin until the second quarter, and even then is very slow, culminating in fourth-quarter margins that are 80% less than pre-pandemic norms. That's a devastating level for hospitals still reeling from the Q1 financial effects of COVID-19 in 2020.

In February, Kaufman Hall issued a report focusing on hospital revenues, finding that 2021 revenue would be down between $53 and $122 billion due to the lingering effects of the public health crisis.

Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com