CEO Jeff Markin shared plans to support you, your colleagues, and our customers once we get to “the other side” of the COVID-19 pandemic. These plans include how we are preparing to handle a resurgence of patient volumes, what we have learned from the coronavirus crisis, as well as how we will resume our previous strategies to accelerate our growth.
Managing Patient Volumes
Our customers have told us to expect a surge in volumes once their patients restart office visits, treatments, and surgeries. We anticipate lost volumes will rapidly return and continue to grow. Our top priority is to recall many of our furloughed employees in direct response to the increase in demand for our services.
Once Our People return to work, we believe we will need even more support to meet forecasted volumes. Historically, it has been a challenge for us to react quickly to sudden swells in volumes. So that we are fully prepared to respond, we have moved forward with plans we had prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to line up additional resources to augment our Operations team.
As some of you may recall, last December we introduced our global office expansion to the city of Hyderabad in Telangana, India, where eHealth India team members assist Operations, Finance, and IT.
Four eHealth India team members who have been reconciling provider database duplicates will be trained and transitioned to processing “New” requests starting April 13. This team will work U.S. hours 9 am – 7 pm ET and will be managed and trained by Marlene Merzacco, Regional Director. At this time, the eHealth India team will not call medical facilities or patients—these calls will be made from our Rochester office. I am confident that with this added support, we will be in a better position to manage the flood of volumes we expect. In May, we expect to expand this team by eight additional people to process Reports and Indexing for the same customers.
The plan to expand our eHealth India team was in place long before our recent furloughs. The timing of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to prepare for the aftermath as quickly as possible. Once we get past the initial volume surge that we’re expecting, we have exciting plans to continue on our path toward aggressive growth and expansion.
Reasoning for Expansion Supported by Learnings from COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has been the ultimate test of our business continuity plan. We’ve learned that having 100% of our operations in one location puts us at risk should a crisis or natural disaster occur. We’re also approaching maximum capacity in our Rochester office.
Distributing our Operations staff across multiple locations and time zones will put us in a better position to avoid business disruptions to our customers. With these factors in mind, we are working toward establishing several eHealth Technologies office locations.
Accelerating Our Growth
In anticipation of doubling and tripling our volumes, we are working toward developing the infrastructure to support our expansion both within the U.S. and abroad.
Expansion in the U.S.
Our Rochester office will continue to serve as our primary and likely our largest site of operations.
We are currently completing an analysis to open an office in Virginia, where there are statewide economic incentive packages for businesses. We are also working to identify an office location on the West Coast.
eHealth India Expansion
Initially we expect the eHealth India team’s capability to support about 35 accounts, plus international cases. We have had potential clients approach us about global work and we currently have limited capacity that the eHealth India team could help us with.
We feel confident that we have plans in place to manage our ongoing growth in ways that benefit Our People, our customers, and their patients. I have asked Tara Shedlosky, Director of Process Excellence, to leading our “Global Growth Team” initiative. I’d also like to thank you for embarking on this journey with us. We appreciate your commitment and fortitude as we together build a stronger company for our future. If you have questions please contact your supervisor or members of Tara’s team.