Letter from the CEO: Adapting to the “New Normal”
As the world adapts to a “new normal” with COVID-19, HealtheConnections is taking proactive steps to implement a virtual operating strategy to deliver valued customer engagement services that will enable safer and effective customer interaction and engagement with its 1,400 healthcare, public health, and community-based health organizations. With social distancing measures in place and sanitization precautions a major priority, “human touch” is probably the last thing customers want or expect – now or in the upcoming months.
HealtheConnections, like many other businesses, transitioned to work-at-home to continue to provide needed health information exchange (HIE) services to the Central New York, North Country, Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley and Mid-Hudson regions. Now, as regions of New York State are re-opening, we are announcing an aggressive re-focusing of our customer service and customer engagement processes to adapt to this changing world.
We continue to work with county health departments, the New York State Department of Health and our participants to provide them valuable and timely patient information from more than 450 data contributing sources. Our technical, operations, customer service, and customer engagement teams have rallied to support our customers during this trying time. We’ve all learned a lot and will continue to learn and adapt as we, together, wrestle with this pandemic and its effect on our lives.
We’ve realized that we must adopt more efficient, virtual, distanced engagement strategies and accompanying services to best support our participants. This will become our “new normal”. HealtheConnections is over-hauling all its processes and services to virtual offerings which will deliver uncompromised customer service through empathetic, proactive engagement aligned with customer needs and timing:
- Expanded webinar sessions for training, best practices and user-focused forums
- Enhanced online training resources and interactive reference materials
- Advanced collaborative tools to maintain customer touches virtually
- Virtual outreach, recruitment and on-boarding of new participants
While our operating environments have changed, our mission remains anchored in trusted collaboration, innovation and customer satisfaction, allowing our participants to deliver better care, at lower costs, with improved patient experience and outcomes. By focusing on virtual strategies and actions, we are affirming our commitment to keep HIE services accessible in an unprecedented situation with uncommon challenges.
Stay safe out there,
Rob Hack
President & CEO
HealtheConnections
