When COVID-19 started spreading throughout the U.S., leaders at the renowned integrated health system Geisinger knew they had no time to waste. Their teams jumped to fast-track healthcare technology deployments, hoping to use their solid IT foundation to support clinicians and save patient lives across 11 campuses.

Based in Pennsylvania, Geisinger earned applause for its quick telemedicine expansion, which the organization supported by deploying more than 2,000 iPads. But not all of those devices left the hospital. Some enabled nurses in the clinic to deliver care without physically interacting with infected patients. From their stations just outside the hospital room, nurses leveraged the technology to monitor patients, track their vital signs, and minimize clinicians’ risk of coronavirus exposure.^{1, 2}

“It has to be just brutal to work in that every day. I couldn’t imagine it,” says John Kravitz, Geisinger’s chief information officer and board chair of the industry group CHIME. “So, anything we can do to help, we’re happy to—to go above and beyond and work all the hours that we can, just to help them make their lives a little bit better.”

In health IT circles, much of the discussion surrounding the COVID-19 response has focused on the obvious: telemedicine, which ballooned as the virus traveled and the government relaxed reimbursement rules. But that’s far from the only kind of healthcare technology deployments to have come about with lightning-fast speed over the past year. Analytics, artificial intelligence, and virtual assistants, to name a few, have all emerged as key tools in the unexpected fight to protect patients and healthcare workers.

“I don’t think we could have ever planned for a pandemic like this. This is the stuff in the movies,” Kravitz says.

But Geisinger certainly responded—and fast. We spoke with Kravitz to learn more about his COVID-19 response and what other healthcare executives can learn about fast-tracking their own healthcare technology deployments.

Geisinger’s data-driven approach

“It was quick efforts, quick thinking, knowing what we had available,” Kravitz says of Geisinger’s response. “How do we leverage that? How do we help our providers and patients, especially by using this technology?”

Consider the iPads. Because the health system already had them on hand, it took just a few days to unbox and distribute them. But the deployment didn’t end with telemedicine and nurses. Kravitz’s team linked the iPads to patient health data, educational material, entertainment services like Netflix, and even software to foster digital patient visits.

Another answer was AI. Geisinger used national data to develop models that determine when and where COVID-19 surges might hit, enabling the health system to prepare by readying additional beds, hiring more staff, and redesigning typical nursing units to accommodate contagious patients. That work has helped clinicians to better treat the roughly 250 COVID-19 patients at Geisinger facilities on a single day in December, up from the high of 121 seen during the first wave, Kravitz says.

AI also powered bots that automated tasks such as scheduling COVID-19 tests for employees and delivering the results. Geisinger also created instructional videos for staffers to take their own samples, further freeing other employees to focus on patients and helping exposed employees return to the frontlines more quickly.

Still, Geisinger had unique advantages. For one, its scope and prestige meant access to resources, from funding to analytics expertise. Equally important, the health system had already established the technological underpinnings of its pandemic response.

“If you’re a small hospital, I don’t want to make it seem like you could do it miraculously because you can’t,” Kravitz says. “It takes time and effort. You have to build your platform. You have to be ready for it.”

Those who are ready can enlist the help of health IT contractors, he adds. And today’s the next best possible time for health systems to begin fortifying their IT infrastructure for the next pandemic.

A broader look at healthcare technology deployments

In his role at CHIME, Kravitz interacts with chief information officers from throughout the U.S. He says many members have shared war stories of fast healthcare technology deployments, ranging from telemedicine and analytics to remote employee work systems. Like Geisinger, which went from using about five bots before COVID-19 to more than 25 now, many CHIME members fast-tracked the deployment of automated technologies, Kravitz notes.

Some health systems struggled to get their projects off the ground, he adds, but those that have found success typically leveraged:

A “quasi-mature” analytics platform
Data professionals who understand every aspect of the job
Data governance to fuel proper reporting and sound analyses

Now, many health systems that lack these bedrock resources are striving to move forward. CHIME is busy producing educational material to ensure that these health systems know how to build and execute high-performance IT strategies.

“They’re working fast and furious to try to make up the gap,” Kravitz says. “We’ve never seen anything like this surge. Health systems have not collapsed. We don’t expect our health system in this country to collapse. It’ll be a struggle, but we will adapt.”

Why fast-tracking technology matters

Geisinger understands the power in getting crucial technology to clinicians and other staffers quickly. After arming nurses with iPad stations, Kravitz and his team received kind notes from employees who were relieved to come into the clinic and find that they didn’t always need to enter COVID-19 patients’ rooms to care for them. Advanced reporting tools suggest that Geisinger’s new technology deployments are working as intended, Kravitz adds.

That’s all the more important now, as clinicians risk illness and burnout just to do their jobs. But strengthening U.S. healthcare will remain pivotal once the pandemic subsides—and technology remain a means to that end.

“Everybody started moving in the direction of digital,” Kravitz says, “making it easier for the consumer to be able to access services, to make it frictionless, so we can anticipate what they want, we can serve up what they want, we can provide it to them, and make it easier for them to get healthcare.”

References:

“Geisinger recognized as top telehealth network in the U.S.” Geisinger, Sept. 2020, https://www.geisinger.org/about-geisinger/news-and-media/news-releases/2020/09/04/20/47/geisinger-recognized-as-top-telehealth-network-in-the-us. Accessed Dec. 10, 2020
“Geisinger, UPMC among health systems fast-tracking tech, telehealth projects for COVID-19.” FierceHealthcare, March 2020, https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/health-system-cios-covid-19-response-we-ve-never-experienced-anything-like. Accessed Dec. 10, 2020.

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