The best way to protect personnel from contagions in the hospital and prevent them from introducing infection into the hospital is to have staff work from home. The COVID-19 experience has demonstrated that most administrative and management tasks in healthcare and other industries can be, and are being, successfully completed from home (tele-commuting). Most of the challenges relate to equipment, bandwidth availability and work schedules. Putting these capabilities also enables the use of remote/at home resources to provide services via telemedicine.
Ideas:
- Ensure IT infrastructure is prepared to support an expanded remote workforce. Including: licensing, server capacity, and available bandwidth.
- Develop key metrics for IT system health, such as available network capacity, unused licenses, and stock on hand; monitor status to identify possible shortages before they occur.
- Ensure that HIPAA requirements are addressed through training and privacy accommodations/devices.
- Determine and standardize equipment in advance to simplify procurement, and identify requirements and specifications in the event that alternatives need to be purchased due to supply chain issues.
- Make the equipment that people use in their office the same as the equipment they will use at home so that staff can easily take equipment home when needed. Eliminate PCs and replace them with laptops and docking stations. or VDI clients.
- Decide on a standard videoconferencing and collaboration platforms in advance. Promote use in advance, and create simple guidelines for when appropriate use of different technologies if the organization supports multiple systems.
- Maintain spare equipment in inventory, ensuring adequate stock of all necessary pieces for connecting equipment, and develop processes for requesting and deploying items.
- Laptops, video, web cameras, speakerphones or headsets, headphones, lighting.
- Mobile hotspots, cellphones, and tablets.
- USB hubs, laptop docking stations, video cables, mice, keyboards.
- Plan in advance and incorporate in your disaster recovery plan.
- Communicate widely with hospital staff if there are changes in procedure for acquiring IT systems or support.
- Ensure necessary connectivity infrastructure into the homes of potential remote workers and consider providing troubleshooting guides for resolving routine home connectivity problems.
- Establish robust process for tracking equipment that is going out to support remote workers and ensure there is a process for receiving equipment when workers return to their offices.