The health care industry will recover and rebound from the Coronavirus pandemic. It is important though to address the areas below that leaders should think about to ensure their experiences were not in vain:
Postmortems: Start making a list of all the issues, processes, systems, and departments you need to assess and evaluate as it relates to performance during this pandemic. It is critical to make an assessment of what worked and what didn’t work so that the next time, whether it be a similar or different crisis, you fix things that are broken and do more of what worked. Include your team in this process to make it as collaborative and productive as possible. A good exercise might be for all managers, front line staff and directors to do individual S.W.O.T analysis and look for common themes together. As you know, however, a difficult part of postmortem’s is evaluating who rose to the challenges and who did not. If there are legitimate issues with certain employees or departments who could have done better, these issues must be addressed, and in some cases, changes should be made.
Supply Chain: How did your vendors and suppliers perform? Who was responsive to your needs and who was not? What do you need to stockpile for future events to not be empty handed the next time? Check with other facilities in your community and competitors to get their perspective, they may have suggestions and partners who came through that you never knew about and may want to switch to. Did your lab come through? your pharmacy? your food supplier? etc. Conversely, assess what suppliers and vendors came through that offer more services that you can build upon. Make sure to go out of your way to thank and recognize those vendors who came through for you after the crisis, those people are invaluable to your facility and company and these relationships are vital for future crisis.