The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted how healthcare organizations work with their software vendors. Much of the industry’s focus has to be on critical operations: frontline healthcare workers caring for a surging number of patients, researchers pushing to quickly develop tests to identify COVID-19 and vaccines to protect against it, and payers working to understand the impact of these costs.
During this time when the industry was mitigating the impacts of COVID-19, many IT initiatives were placed on hold or had projects cancelled altogether. But at some organizations, executive leadership made the difficult decision to keep moving forward, believing that the benefits and efficiencies of implementing new software would help with their organization’s overall response to the pandemic.
Here at Extract, we have helped healthcare organizations through every step of the implementation process during the pandemic: from the initial statement of work through go-live. For those who decided to continue projects, we had to find creative ways to tackle a remote implementation, reimagining what observation and training sessions looked like all the way through remote go-live support. All while ensuring staff safety.
Remote Support from SOW to Go-Live
During a traditional, in-person Extract implementation, we partner with a healthcare organization to observe current end user workflows, create a solution within Extract, test those newly developed workflows, train staff on how to use our technology, and support the go-live. We would often be on-site various times throughout the project to collaborate with end users, operations, and IT teams to create an acceptable solution, train users, provider at the elbow go-live support, and gather feedback for future optimization requests.
But on-site visits were no longer possible because of COVID-19 and staff safety concerns. So, we needed to be creative and flexible with solutions.
For observation sessions, the Extract team used screen sharing capabilities for organizations to present current workflows either through live end user demos or pre-recorded videos. For training and go-live support to be successful, end users needed the ability to physically see how to interact with the software. Screen sharing capabilities were once again critical.
In all of this, communication was key. We had to ensure workflows and processes were accurate. Daily communication leading up to and during the first few weeks of go-live was essential to work through ongoing issues and provide updates to stakeholders.
Partnership with Extract
The flexibility of an implementation was rooted in an organization’s partnership with Extract. Strong vendor relationships led to effective solutions during a tumultuous situation like a global pandemic. These strong relationships ultimately ensured success.
Establishing a close-knit connection between Extract and healthcare organization teams allowed customization of traditional implementation project plans and methods. Plans could be adjusted when partners communicated their needs. Especially during these unprecedented times, Extract has adjusted plans to ensure a successful implementation, accommodating what each organization needed.
Lessons Learned
COVID-19 pressured the industry to make quick decisions and adapt to a remote environment, which forced many healthcare organizations to put projects on hold. But the flexibility and creativity of each organization’s virtual implementation highlights how there are multiple paths to success.
COVID-19 has impacted both Extract and the healthcare organizations we work with. An effective implementation was dependent on a strong partnership, not necessarily tied to the physical distance between teams. Effective partnerships that were able to adapt to a remote environment led to success for these organizations.
When in-person implementations become possible again, Extract will continue to work with healthcare organizations to create innovative solutions through effective partnerships that will lead to success.
About the Author: Andrew Loeffler
Andrew is a Project Manager and Customer Support Specialist at Extract with 10 years’ experience in the healthcare IT industry. He worked at Epic Systems on the technical services and vendor relations teams for a decade and has partnered with IT teams and clinicians at major healthcare organizations. Andrew is experienced in managing development, working with customer teams on version upgrades and implementation projects to deliver healthcare software solutions on time and under budget. He is passionate about developing products and innovative solutions to tackle healthcare challenges.