RESILIENCE AND RESULTS
RESILIENCE AND RESULTS:
POWERING THROUGH A PANDEMIC Legacy has always faced issues head-on and the COVID-19 pandemic has been no different. While the communities Legacy serves are no strangers to weathering storms, the COVID-19 pandemic hit as hard as a hurricane and continued to surge. Its impact was felt across the communities Legacy serves. As the world changed around them, Legacy team members came together quickly to help provide continued access to the affordable quality health care their patients have come to rely on.
Safety Measures
From the pandemic’s onset, Legacy teams worked swiftly to implement measures to protect the health of staff and patients while continuing to provide access to care. Symptom screening and triage were set up at all locations, increased sanitization practices were enacted, patient-facing staff were supplied with personal protective equipment, visitors and staff were required to wear face coverings and protective measures like social distancing and hand hygiene were implemented. Further efforts included the rapid conversion of certain in-person visits to telemedicine and telehealth (video visits), the demarcation of clinic areas for well and sick patients and the setup of drivethrough visits and laboratory testing.
Increased Access to Care
Throughout the pandemic, Legacy’s Operational and Clinical teams led efforts to maintain access to care while reducing the risk of COVID-19 exposure for staff and patients. Legacy was among the first to open COVID-19 testing tents to the public, opening locations in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Montrose and Southwest areas on March 16, 2020, and in Beaumont two days later. The Government Relations team engaged with state officials to help implement the utilization of telemedicine and telehealth, allowing patients to access care from the safety of their homes.
Training and Redeployment
Legacy’s efforts would have been impossible without the extraordinary willingness of team members to put aside concerns about the virus and step into new roles to support continued delivery of care. Within days of the first reported cases of COVID-19 in the community, staff were cross-trained and redeployed. Dentists worked at COVID-19 testing tents. School-Based Health Care providers started seeing patients through telehealth and telemedicine platforms. Non-patient-facing staff worked around the clock from home to put procedures in place to “I have no idea when we will ensure uninterrupted access to care, such as converting behavioral be allowed to return to normal health services from 100% in-person care to 90% virtual care in just activities. But rest assured, I am a few weeks. Even with the increased distance from one another, grateful for Legacy’s presence in staff implemented new technologies, protocols and procedures at our community and the services remarkable speed.
that are provided.” Chantini Thomas
School Nurse, Bellaire High School
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2020 Year In Review
