This Week in Health Tech How Are You? Human Resources Management in a crisis w/ Tony Welch
In the latest episode of This Week in Health Tech we welcome Tony Welch, Senior VP and Chief Human Resources Officer, Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital.
Vik mentions that actually, Tony Welch hired him in his first hospital job, at Hardin Memorial Health in Kentucky.
We jump into the COVID-19 situation and how it has affected remote working at Phoebe Putney. Vik explains that Tido's team is used to remote working but it is definitely different for hospital staff. Tony indicated that they had to pretty much write a new manual. Tony explains that Phoebe had a surge of COVID-19 patients at the same time as New York City. PPE was a challenge with a huge population of COVID patients. Phoebe had the foresight and did have six months' worth of PPE stock however because of the surge, they used up 6 months stock within 7 days! Because of the highly infectious disease, they had to dispose of PPE gear after each use. However industrious staff at Phoebe created mask guards so N65 mask can be re-used without having to be disposed of after each use.
Phoebe had to repurpose beds for COVID-19 patients. They also created a labor pool that was managed by the Human Resources team. Staff was re-assigned jobs, probably way below their skill level. Jimmy asked if staff morale was affected by this but Tony shared that the staff handled it as well as they could. They took new job duties to help out with the crisis.
Facilities in the area actually followed Phoebe's lead. "Emergencies tend to be a morale booster," Tony said and that was true with this situation.
Vik asked how was the communication handled with this crisis in keeping staff updated. Tony shared that Phoebe stood up a command center to deal with crisis communication. The Command Center was manned for 17 hours a day to ensure staff was kept updated.
CEO and leadership team had decided early on that they were going to be very transparent with staff and with the community. They have a newsletter that communicated about challenges and news. They also started a new video series and the link to the video is shared via email for all staff.
There was also the collaboration with hospitals in the region however Phoebe was affected way more than others in the region.
Vik indicates that with Tido's partners they are seeing huge uptake on digital transformation to support new digital tools example telehealth, covid testing/check-in tools, etc and if Phoebe has seen a change in the digital strategy. Tony shared that telehealth was in the works for a couple of years but COVID definitely escalated the project implementation and now they are seeing more than 70-80 telehealth visits a week and it works great for chronic health patients example diabetic patients.
Lastly, we dig into the social unrest and changes happening or needed in our society. Tony indicated that Phoebe wants to meet the needs of the community and wants to represent the community appropriately in Phoebe staff. They have done a diversity focus group and are standing up a diversity council. They also had to let go of some employees because their ideas of social justice and Phoebe did not align who disparaged people on social media. Tony indicated that they are also looking at their metrics including generational mixes. For example, the biggest number of staff is millennials however they are not represented a
Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes
Vik Patel - LinkedIn
Tido Inc. - Website
Tido Inc. - LinkedIn