Pack Health, a Salesforce customer, wrote this article.

What do you do when a pandemic requires you to quadruple the capacity of your business in days? Back in March, our digital health coaching company Pack Health started getting calls from hospitals and national health insurance companies. 

Collectively, these healthcare companies asked if we had the capacity to handle up to 50,000 more members with chronic conditions — that’s three times what we currently serve.

Here’s how we responded.

Providing support for individuals with chronic disease

As COVID-19 overwhelms our healthcare system, patients with chronic conditions have been forced to postpone care, including surgeries, treatment, and routine health appointments. These individuals may not have tested positive for COVID-19, but still need health services and support to properly manage their condition.

For the average person, the fear of COVID-19 is frightening and overwhelming, and the rapid changes to daily life have widespread impacts on mental health. Having a chronic condition compounds those worries with the reality of being “high-risk.” Many are afraid to leave their home for fear of getting infected, while others don’t have the option to leave home without support. Many self-isolate.

At Pack Health, our mission is to help those with chronic conditions access the right care at the right time and develop self-management skills to improve their health. The certified Health Advisors who power our digital health coaching platform engage and support people living with chronic conditions, like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as present comorbidities, social determinants, and barriers. 

The sessions are conducted, one on one, over the phone, text, and email, helping to support member goals, motivate healthy behavior, and drive better health outcomes. It’s an intensive model, requiring experienced, highly-trained employees to manage the calls. Scaling up from 30+ Health Advisors to more than 100 takes strong management, a supporting culture, mature processes, and critical technology. 

Onboarding new hires with virtual training

We knew COVID-19 was going to impact how we operated. Fortunately, our digital health coaching platform and enrollment system is built on Salesforce, an open and flexible platform, which enables us to adapt quickly, as we register new members and onboard new Health Advisors.

First, we switched to delivering all Health Advisor training virtually, instead of face to face and group sessions because we were all working from home. But there was a silver lining: Going virtual helped us scale rapidly. We’re no longer limited by geographic location so we can recruit and train prospective Health Advisors regardless of where they live.

After a week of training, Health Advisors have the tools to quickly engage with members. Salesforce Service Cloud guides advisors through the process of initial engagement with members: they can share COVID-19-focused educational resources, and reference evidence-based materials to educate members on their condition, set goals, and form a plan to effectively manage their health — all on the member’s preferred communication channel.

Thanks to these steps, we quickly onboarded 20 new hires in a matter of days. We developed the capacity to bring on 100 new Health Advisors over the coming months, which will allow us to support more than 50,000 additional members.

Dual benefit: Reducing stress on our healthcare system

Now, over one month in, our member base continues to increase. We’re still recruiting and onboarding new Health Advisors. And, as we always have, we continue to support a very vulnerable population.

I’d like to give a huge shout out to the Pack Health team and our Health Advisors for all the work they do to support individuals with chronic conditions. Engaging this population is so important, necessary, and essential.

Finally, by increasing our network and the number of individuals we support, we hope to help reduce strain on our healthcare system, especially the frontline healthcare workers fighting COVID-19.

Salesforce is offering a free care response solution for healthcare and life science organizations impacted by COVID-19. The solution can be deployed quickly and at no charge for six months to immediately aid those in need. Refer to the blog for detail.

To get more tips on navigating through COVID-19, check out our Leading Through Change series, where you’ll find thought leadership, tips, and resources to help business leaders manage through crisis.