Employing Salesforce as your framework for delivering solutions has many benefits, made especially apparent as we’ve seen the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and return-to-work needs. A benefit of particular note during times of constant change, is that the agility of a technology platform allows for rapid development and deployment of solutions.
Silverline has seen this first hand as we’ve worked to build custom solutions for healthcare industry needs during this time. First, we partnered with Salesforce to implement their Rapid Response solution in order to help organizations quickly triage patients due to significant increases in call volume.
Next, we started, and will continue, talking to organizations about their need to focus on bringing patients back — revenue recapture. All organizations have the data, but how can they leverage their trove of data on cancelled appointments to re-engage with patients for elective, or even mandatory, appointments and procedures that might have been cancelled or postponed? How can they identify next best actions that help close care gaps?
Shifting focus from revenue to health
While this may be called revenue recapture, which could seem particularly crass, I personally would like to call it health recapture. I know on my end, there are plenty of recurring appointments that I do to be proactive about my health and wellness that were cancelled or postponed during the pandemic.
Think about the impact of thousands and/or millions of people not doing their routine dental checkup? What about people with a physical ailment that seems minor but could potentially be a broken bone, torn ligament, or other bodily damage? How about routine tests like a mammogram or other preventive measure where timeliness of diagnosis could be critical.
Health recapture is not just a focus on getting back to a steady state, it is about foundationally adjusting the way in which we as patients and consumers, along with all of the providers and organizations, interact moving forward.
So, while this brings “revenue” back to healthcare organizations it also starts to bring back to focus the needs for us all to improve or address health concerns. Not only will this need continue, but it’s very apparent that the old model of assuming that certain types of procedures or appointments are in-person or in a hospital will be drastically changed. Virtual will become the norm. Home or remote models of care will be more standard. The manner, mode, and channel in which we engage with, or as, patients will be forever changed.
Return to work initiatives
However, what we are also finding is that although many of the solutions we deliver for healthcare organizations focus on engagement, access, and digital transformation, there is also a need for organizations to safely reopen and care for their own employees — be it clinical, administrative, support and all roles in between. That has allowed us to move into the next solution area, which is around return to work initiatives. While we don’t focus on the core administration piece, there is a need to engage with employees in a new way, such as contact tracing capabilities to keep the workforce safe.
This need is why the next solution that Silverline is partnering with Salesforce around, is work.com, where we’ll be building custom solutions to help organizations looking to safely return their employees to work. And the focus isn’t solely about the return, but also the ongoing monitoring and new reality of safety in the workplace.
What’s exciting as a partner is the manner in which Salesforce was able to develop a new “product”. Salesforce analyzed current organizational needs and then assessed existing platform capabilities across all their product lines. By doing so, Salesforce identified the objects, fields, workflow, and other capabilities that historically may have solved other problems, but now can be utilized for return to work.
Healthcare meets Human Resources
The aforementioned capabilities were bolstered by new components, ultimately creating a scalable, rapidly deployable, and meaningful solution to a new engagement problem that many HR organizations are seeking to address. This is exciting for us as we are now looking to support a completely different audience and stakeholder at the healthcare organizations that we interact with, but combining the overall power of the platform.
The work.com framework has a few key feature sets right now, with more on the way:
- Workplace Command Center
- Employee Wellness Check
- Shift Management
- Contract tracing
- myTrailhead for learning and Wellness
- Emergency Response Management
- Volunteer and Grants Management
If you look at employers within the states that have started to return to work, the early data is showing an increase in cases which further emphasizes the need not to just “return to work” but “return to work safely,” in an agile fashion, that allows their businesses to adapt quickly. Our economy and society won’t succeed in reviving healthy, financially stable workforces if an organization needs to close entirely each time it encounters a new Covid-19 case. We need to find ways to monitor, prepare, and adjust procedures to mitigate future escalation of pandemics.
We all know that it isn’t possible to prepare for the human, economic, and technological impacts experienced from a pandemic like COVID-19. Because of this, our focus is helping organizations establish a scalable foundation that allows them to solve challenges today, which may be recurring or unexpected, while also preparing for this new reality.
We recognize that healthcare organizations are not only going through relief stages due to the pandemic, but there is an unavoidable structural transformation that will require new tools, methods, and approaches for healthcare delivery and employee safety. As your own healthcare organization returns to work, or seeks a way to evolve patient engagement, Silverline is here to help. Reach out when you’re ready to take that first step.