Two gurneys roll down the hall with deceased COVID-19 patients. Hallway hand sanitizer dispensers have disappeared. Protective masks with eye shields are no longer available. A thermometer falls out of the front pocket of a tech who is self-monitoring at work. Three radiology techs are out sick and one is hospitalized. The ICU is full and they’ve floated a PACU registered nurse in to work. I’m not in Italy, nor in China. I’m working a shift in the Silicon Valley—the technology hub of the United States.
I’m an anesthesiologist with 20 years of experience, and the CEO and founder of a software company, Issio Solutions. Our experts in workforce optimization build software to help manage our healthcare workforces. These workforces are already straining under the weight of the pandemic at hand, and it is just getting started. Everyone is talking about ventilators, but what if you have no one to run them?
The healthcare workforce in the United States is often disjointed and siloed by discipline and work location. Schedules are often created by hand using pen and paper or spreadsheets. Credentialing for new staff can take months to approve. Our healthcare system has facilities and regions that are overstaffed, while others are understaffed. Issio breaks down these barriers and connects those wanting work with those needing help.
At present, the United States has many surgery centers that have temporarily closed, while many hospital intensive care units are desperate for staff. Many of the over 3000 surgery centers nationwide have trained staff with both hospital and ICU experience—highly skilled staff who are accustomed to caring for multiple patients and managing vital signs and critical events like hypotension, bleeding and so forth. How can we utilize these staff to support our hospitals in a time of crisis?
Issio connects the two.
In this COVID-19 challenge, floating our skilled staff to work where they are most needed—both efficiently and safely—is going to be essential to our success in facing this pandemic. Hospitals need more robust and flexible tools to succeed. Issio Solutions offers just such a tool. During this national emergency we are proud to offer it to any health system or region of the country that wants to more efficiently and effectively manage their healthcare workforce— with no set up cost and at low cost.
When we designed this platform eight years ago, we set the standard for its ‘ease of use’ to be extremely high—one that is easy enough to be used by a child. Health technology can, and should, be as functionally robust and easy to use as every other type of technology in our lives. Especially now, in this crisis, this is what we need.
Issio Solutions’ platform takes a simple list of your staff contacts and turns it into a tool that your managers can use to quickly communicate with each other, efficiently select available staff who have the skill sets they need at a particular time (from either inside or outside their department), and then communicate immediately with these floating staff. Credentials, skill sets, contact info, and schedule across many departments are all available in one central dashboard for managers to reference.
How does it work? Your staff receive a text message, access an application through a link, and set up their profile (skill sets, work experience, credentials, licenses, and so forth). Staff then update their availability using their mobile device (it’s as easy as accessing any social media site). Health systems or regions of the country with multiple facilities log in and access a dashboard where they can directly search for and schedule available staff. Staff are notified of their assignment through text message, email or calendar sync.
Issio Solutions is offering this tool to any hospital, health care facility or region of the country during this national emergency. Our product is fully web based and there is minimal training nor specialized equipment required. We are here to help solve our nationwide workforce optimization challenge during this time of need.
If your health system is interested in setting this up, please contact us at:
