While the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of employees working from home across industries, hospitals and health systems have taken tailored approaches to which workers they still need to provide in-person support.
Here, five CIOs from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. share how they have approached working on-site for their IT teams during the pandemic.
Question: Who from your organization's IT team still needs to work on-site, and why?
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Todd Richardson, senior vice president and CIO at Aspirus (Wausau, Wis.): We have taken an aggressive approach to enabling our workforce to work remotely. Not only has it been important as a preventive measure, we need to support our staff as they are dealing with child care issues as well as children participating in virtual education. While the vast majority can work in a remote setting, there are those who support and deploy hardware at the desktop or in the data center, who are required to be on-site. Regardless of where they work, we have all staff participating with daily attestation as well as on-site temperature screenings.
Personal protective equipment is also an important aspect as they come on-site and come in contact with other staff and patients in the healthcare setting. We have heavily used tools such as Webex and remote desktop access to support end users. The feedback we have received from our staff on the organization caring for their safety and well-being has been overwhelmingly positive. We have regular Webex staff and team meetings to keep in touch and communicate and have seen staff taking their own initiative to Webex with team members. While it has stressed many, we believe we are doing everything possible to respond to staff needs while maintaining support for the technology we have responsibility for.
Randy Davis, vice president and CIO at CGH Medical Center (Sterling, Ill.): The only role consistently needed on-site is a subset of those responsible for manning our help desk. While most calls can be dealt with by those at home, we find we need a presence here to deal with issues that can only be fixed with a hands-on approach. Other than that, it's all episodic. For the most part today, our IT department is pretty empty and we seem to have not missed a beat. It feels different, but of course change always does. We had a work-from-home policy before COVID-19, and this expanded it. We consistently use Microsoft Teams; good people know when their presence on-site is needed, and we're blessed to have just that. They also understand the value of staying home and protecting themselves and family from exposure. If I had to characterize on any given day, I'd say we’re 85 percent home and 15 percent at the hospital.
Julie Trethewey, CIO at Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center (South Bend, Ind.): The only IT staff required to work on-site are break/fix technicians, who provide physical hardware support as we still have patients coming to our facilities.
Lee Carmen, associate vice president and CIO at the University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City): During this pandemic, we have transitioned to a work-from-home model for the majority of our IT workforce. Our staff who place new computer equipment and troubleshoot and repair existing computer equipment have maintained an on-site presence to ensure there are no prolonged disruptions to clinical operations associated with computer failure. A rotating schedule of representatives from our network, telephony, nurse call, and server and storage support teams maintain an on-site presence to address any issues that require hands-on contact with hardware. Our clinical informatics team also maintains an on-site presence to provide in-person support to our clinical staff as they are delivering care.
Charles Watson, DO, chief medical information officer at Kettering (Ohio) Health Network: I would say those who provide direct support to clinical staff often need to be on-site due to the inability to solve all problems and requests remotely. Also, employees who provide hardware support including telecom often need to be on-site for repairs.