This week seemed especially hard. COVID-19 continues to impact our daily lives, most of the country remains under “shelter in place” orders, and daily life as we used to know it seems like it was light-years ago. We anticipated coming out of winter into a season of celebration with tournaments, spring break trips, proms, and graduations. Instead, the past week was consumed with increasing numbers of infections and deaths, and a new era that included announcements of thousands of employee furloughs.
It started last week with a few health systems furloughing employees, and now the list tops over 100 systems nationally, with corporations like
Dick’s Sporting Goods adding another 40,000 employees to the soon-to-be furloughed list. It was challenging to listen to the news and realize the hundreds of thousands of lives that will quickly be impacted with uncertainty and additional stress.
The part that struck me as the most frustrating was that this is one of the primary reasons that I decided to leave my job and launch achi. I wanted to create a company that would help corporations care for their employees and help connect them to necessary support resources in their communities. Yet, here I was watching these events unfold around me thinking I should have done this six months ago.
Today I spent several hours listening to the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s (HFMA) Spring Virtual Conference where I heard Joe Fifer, HFMA’s President and CEO, make a Biblical reference to the book of Esther. He reminded the healthcare professionals that although times are hard, we were made for “just such a time as this.” Wow – that gave me a different perspective.
After rereading the story of Esther, I realized that instead of looking at the challenges, we are called as leaders for “just such a time as this.” If anything, this crisis has shown me the increasing need to have support systems in place, to educate employees, and to ensure that people have knowledge of and access to services that can help them in times like this. Now is the time to look at things differently and put new systems and processes in place to communicate with furloughed employees. In many ways, this upheaval has taught us that some things do need to change. How we respond will determine the course for our communities in the future. Let’s use this time to take care of each other and ensure that everyone has the support they need.
For more information about ways achi can help you communicate with your furloughed employees, please download our flyer.
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About achi
achi is a holistic care management company that lowers overall expenses by actively engaging people and connecting them to organizations to address the social determinants of health. Through innovative partnerships, cross-sector collaboration, and creative solutions, we equip organizations across multiple industries to educate the people they serve and connect them with resources to improve their lives from the ground up. By partnering with health systems, educational institutions and corporations, achi empowers lasting transformation in individual lives—resulting in an overall healthier population and data to transform our healthcare payment models. To learn more about achi and its mission, visit www.achi.solutions.