During the early days of the pandemic, Venice shifted their focus to balance the growing demands of their patients with the needs and safety of their staff. As a result, Venice identified two immediate needs. The first was to respond to increasing need for additional care sites, and the second was to address staff burnout.

Venice addressed the first need by quickly expanding its telemedicine capabilities. Telemedicine had been at its infancy at Venice medicine at the start of the pandemic. They already partnered with a telemedicine group but needed to expand to meet urgent, Covid-19 demands. This included building infrastructure and privacy protocols for the technology.

To address staff burnout, Venice expanded its work from home capabilities by providing laptops to nurses, human resources and front desk staff. While this allowed Venice to increase access amid capacity constraints and social distancing requirements, it also led to stacked meetings and visits. To prevent this new reality from contributing to burnout, Venice is making plans to more appropriately limit and distribute meetings for staff.

Building telemedicine capabilities expanded where care could be accessed. Given the flexible nature of virtual care, it also changed when care could be accessed. To balance patient and provider needs, Venice allowed physicians to choose their telemedicine hours even if those were outside of regular clinic hours. This additional physician flexibility reduced physician burnout and increased staff engagement.

For Venice, it started with one physician with a difficult schedule. Rather than extending clinic hours, Venice found that having telemedicine capabilities allowed this physician to choose their own hours. And once the benefits of doing so for one physician were clear, “it was important to try to determine what made sense for each provider…Getting that right mix of in person and virtual was challenging for each individual provider.”

Although flexible scheduling began as a way to maintain physician satisfaction, patients have benefited from extended hours as well. Patients are drawn to Venice from the competitive areas surrounding their outreach centers, given Venice’s reputation for quality and compassionate care. Flexible hours is a further way to draw patients in and keep them happy. One challenge that Venice still grapples with is communicating to patients that this flexibility exists.

Covid-19 required a rapid response, but Venice decided to make the most of its new investments by reflecting and iterating on its solutions. Through this process, it became clear that Venice needed a strong cardiovascular service line rooted within its broader, ambulatory network strategy.

In recent years, Venice took on the challenge of centralizing the cardiovascular service line. They terminated their management company partnership in favor of integrating the service line processes at the medical center. As a result, cardiovascular specialists have more defined process guidelines and the support of a co-located pharmacy tech for prior authorization. While day-to-day decisions are less autonomous now that they are decided at the system level, Venice feels the pros outweigh the cons.