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>> Well, Dr. Balshi, thank you so much for joining us today.
Really excited to have you. I want to take
us back to the beginning of the pandemic.
Can you tell us a little bit about how it
started for St. Luke's and what you did?
In particular, I'm really interested in how you set up
your communication and care process.
>> One of the things that was really important in how
we had to respond was our location relative to New York City.
Even though we're about 80 miles west of New York,
we felt like we were part of the New York ecosystem.
We had been using Microsoft Teams and this
gave us a tremendous tool to set up
multiple command centers and to work
virtually even before it was required by our state government.
>> That's great to hear. And was Teams also used to coordinate across
clinicians and researchers and people
who are working on various aspects of the problem?
>> Our pulmonary critical care team
had been using Teams to collaborate
across all of our campuses to refine and adjust our care plans.
As a result, we had
a dramatically improved outcome curve
with COVID patients in our network.
I was really proud when our critical care specialists said
they couldn't have done this without
the collaborative platform of Teams.
>> That is awesome.
That definitely warms my heart.
The team here is so excited to be working on the product.
I love what you've talked to me about
previously about virtual visits and virtual rounds.
Tell us what you've been doing.
>> It's an interesting scenario in Pennsylvania
because we had virtually no elective
telehealth visits occurring.
We were able to take
our 1,500 providers and rapidly train them on Teams.
Within about a four-week period,
we moved from zero televisits to over a 100,000 visits.
>> Wow, that's really remarkable.
Those televisits, do they also
reduce the strain on St. Luke's resources?
>> At the same time that we were trying to adapt to
the lack of ambulatory or outpatient visits,
we were struggling with trying to preserve PPE.
Then we worked rapidly with
the Teams development group to put the Power App in
place to allow us to directly connect with
those rooms remotely from anywhere within our network.
If I knew that Jared Spataro was in Room
327 at the Anderson Campus,
I could just go to that room on the Power App and we could
connect without Jared having to do anything other than say hello.
This enabled us to have providers
interact with the patients without having to consume the gowns,
the gloves, the goggles,
the face mask protectors.
>> That's great. I love to hear it.
We're all in the period now when
we're looking at what the future will be like.
What's going to happen, do you think, with these technologies,
and the use of these technologies?
>> I think that the reluctance for
telehealth virtually eliminated itself
as we dove into this process.
One of our primary care docs reminded me of
my father's experience many years ago
where he was a primary care physician and told
me that he had been in every house on the south side of Bethlehem.
Now it occurred to me that a house call,
it's a virtual encounter.
It really is something that is
a surprising benefit to
what has been really a devastating challenge for health care.
>> I really appreciate your perspective.
I wonder if you would take a moment to
just give the people who watch this some advice,
particularly other physicians or other folks
who are using technology in a medical setting.
>> What we found with Teams, as opposed to
all of the prior ways of using telehealth,
this is a paradigm shift for the way we
view the value of a doctor-patient relationship.
It can be very intimate and it can be very good.
It certainly doesn't replace a face-to-face visit
but it is really important.
We're going to find that it's going to change the way
we plan and strategize about delivering care to our communities.
>> At Microsoft, we really
believe that the best technologies blend into the background.
I hope we're getting closer and closer
to that ideal in your circumstances.
>> I think we are and I think, especially,
when a network like ours
has so rapidly converted in the face of this.
I can't imagine doing what we do without having something
as easy as Teams for these conference calls,
these video visits, these collaborative meetings that we now have.
It's really been a game changer for us.
>> Wow, that's wonderful to hear. Dr. Balshi,
thank you so much for your leadership,
for everything that you're teaching us.
>> It's been a great experience.
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