Getting investments made in any organization can be tricky. We’ve previously talked about the types of things can do to prepare the financial case for your project, which is a great start, and also what you’ll need to do to get your project approved.
Often times, though, even if you have a project that will pay for itself, upfront funding can be difficult to come by thanks to quickly shifting priorities. This does cut both ways, and means that funding could also become available at a moment’s notice, making it important to always be prepared to pitch.
The pandemic has made these shifting priorities move even faster as hospitals scramble for new ways of interacting with their patients while simultaneously trying to absorb the impact of revenue shortfalls due to things like paused elective procedures. Given the severity of the pandemic, unexpected funding has shown up, courtesy of the US government, distributed in programs like the CARES Act or the FCC’s telehealth grants.
We found that through this additional funding, our customers in the county government space were able to process decades of historical documents to make them available to the public online, avoiding time-consuming in-person visits that could be a way to spread the virus. What’s great about a project like that is that it not only satisfies a pandemic-related necessity, but it also provides an ongoing benefit for both the public and government workers.
Just as with other grants, Burrell Behavioral Health in Springfield, MO was able to invest in a telehealth project for the pandemic that will continue to serve them for years. For a practice dealing in mental health, the pandemic brought increased demand for services, but additional difficulty meeting face to face. They were able to secure about three quarters of a million dollars from the FCC telehealth grant program to implement their changes.
The pandemic may have been the impetus for Burrell to shore up their telehealth services, but there are plenty of non-pandemic reasons that a robust telehealth solution will help them serve more patients, whether it be winter weather, travel distance, or anxiety about an in-person visit.
The project involved creating new virtual resources for staff as well. The three main objectives were to provide computer resources for the remote workforce, expand network capacity to handle the increase in external traffic, and provide the applications needed to connect employees and patients.
This meant using enhanced capabilities with Zoom, creating the ability to remote in to work machines, and access virtual phones while being able to run off an employee’s home internet. The end result was that 80% of Burrell’s employees were able to work from home and they also had significant reductions in client-canceled appointments. The evidence is anecdotal for the reason behind the drop in cancellations, but it seems the non-pandemic factors of weather or illness are being alleviated by the new virtual capabilities.
This means that Burrell Behavioral Health was able to leverage a unique event in securing the grant money to make a lasting impact on their operations. We love projects that improve efficiency and make a long-term impact so at Extract we focus on all the paper, faxes, email attachments, scans, and other documents that flow into healthcare organizations and turn them into data for your EMR.
Throwing bodies at a problem isn’t a solution, but adding efficiencies to a workflow is something that can not only get approved, but provide benefits for years to come.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.