It’s been about a million days since our unprecedented lockdown in the Bay Area. As the “shelter-in-place” begins to ease up and new social limitations come into play, eventually we’re going to inevitably transition from calling this the “new normal” to just “normal”.  As the COVID-19 crisis continues to impact the world, we’re all trying our best to continue to live life and move forward. To do so, we’re forced to rethink and redefine how we operate and how we live.

On that fateful Tuesday afternoon in March, when San Francisco issued the stay at home orders, our San Francisco-based team had to pack up monitors, keyboards, etc. we’d need in order to be away from the office for what was projected to just be a few weeks. We all worked from home from time to time, but none of us were really set up to do this full-time. Thankfully, we had our remote staff who were “veterans” at working from home! Along with our DevOps team, they provided us with tips and tricks to get our home offices set up, along with best practices to balance the blur of working and living in our homes. As my colleague Veronica mentioned in a previous blog post, the blurred lines of home daycare, homeschooling, home working, and just being at home for literally everything is basically an hourly juggling act. The term “work/life balance” has never been more relevant to me.

New Call Intake System to Meet High Demand for Telehealth Services

Aside from the actual physical set up, we also had to quickly figure out new ways to support our customers. We pride ourselves in supporting our customers directly, which translates to support calls now ringing our cell phones instead of the connected office lines. This challenge was exacerbated by our instantly high demand for our telehealth services. Our Ops team quickly realized the in-office model didn’t align with the current circumstance and shifted focus on new efficiencies to face these challenges head-on. The result was a new call intake system which dramatically turned our lives around and significantly increased customer satisfaction.

pMD Moves Quickly to Successfully Handle High Telehealth System Use

But what about the platform? Just days into the lockdown, reports of Facebook servers getting overwhelmed hit headlines as millions of Americans had nothing else to do at home. We at pMD were well-equipped to onboard any number of new providers at any given time, but this world-wide lockdown drove demand for our telehealth usage beyond our expectations! Pretty much overnight, all of our customers needed to get their patients onto pMD’s telehealth system to keep their patient population safe while continuing to provide health services. Anticipating our customers would potentially connect with tens of thousands of patients virtually and instantly, our Director of Software immediately directed our developers to access and shore up our scalability. This became a multi-team initiative that executed around the clock on just a moment’s notice. Our Dev team’s ability to adapt and pivot so quickly allowed us to handle the viral demand with huge success.

Doing Our Part to Help Save Lives with pMD’s Telehealth Solution

I’m constantly impressed by everyone I work with at pMD. In spite of all the grim news out there, my pMD family continues to stay strong, tackling every new challenge with a smile and a fierce determination. I think this mindset is what has allowed us to successfully help our customers onboard thousands of new patients DAILY onto pMD’s telehealth solution in this new world of social distancing and flattening the curve. I’m proud to be able to say we are doing our part to help the health care community and save patient lives.

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