Problem
You are the executive director of Smithville Regional Hospital. Since COVID-19, your hospital has implemented telemedicine to serve patients. How has it gone? What kinds of assessment is required after an initiative like this? In addition to keeping staff and patients safe, there is evidence that this delivery method can lessen other problems the hospital is having in these areas (to name a few): patients unable to return to the hospital for follow up visits after procedures (leading to high rate of re-admittance), an overcrowded ER, and poor satisfaction surveys-and costs associated with these. Some practitioners were reluctant to adopt this platform and would prefer to continue seeing patients face-to-face only for follow up visits. Your job is to communicate to various parties (see below) using different business communication vehicles. The CEO is counting on you to oversee a continued smooth rollout of this new protocol with training, implementation, upgrades, assessment and cost reduction.
You can add any details you wish about your hospital in order to complete these assignments. Think about these kinds of things: size, location (rural or urban), strategic goals, problems, costs caused by patients not attending follow-up visits, rates of re-admittance, specialty of physicians (if notable), as a way to assist patients who cannot access the hospital. There is also the consideration of a COVID-19 resurgence and what needs to be in place. You may also add details of the success that local, benchmark hospitals are having with this new system. Do people in your area have computers and smartphones (you could make up a local census). Did this impact use of telemedicine in the past year? Other considerations might be what kind of coverage do patients who use this system have with private insurance or even Medicare and Medicaid, what kinds of technology or upgrades might be required? There is growing use of mental health professionals' and telemedicine. What will this entail?
Give an example of an email you would write to a concerned physician who wonders how the quality of patient care has been and may continue to be affected by this new system. Acknowledge and reassure them. Some data documenting the success of this system from a practitioner's point of view at a hospital similar to Smithville would help.