We had learned about the power outages and fires happening in California; we wanted to help.

News Anchor: “California is burning…statewide utilities cut power to more than 209,000 customers to minimize the fire risk.” 

Paula: My name is Paula Schinning and I’m a Customer Success Manager here at One Medical Passport. We reached out to our California clients to see if we could help them get the word out to their patients about facilities closing or delaying surgery.

Sarah Sterling, an Administrator at Sutter Health: “It was 10pm when our center lost power. We were in a position where we just didn’t know how to get ahold of our physicians, our staff, and most importantly, our patients. We needed to let them know the status of the center and their procedures”. 

Paula: We reached out to a couple of facilities and went ahead and turned on one time messaging through Passport Engage, our patient engagement solution. They were able to reach out to their patients pretty quickly.  We left it on for them just as they were kind of recovering from that, and then we had customers that were actively evacuating.

News Anchor: “Further north and Sonoma County conditions are even worse, forcing 200,000 evacuations”.

Paula: Some of the facilities had smoke in their OR’s and they couldn’t have access to their scheduling system. So, being at home, they were able to get ahold of patients to tell them “hey we’re closed for the week due to the fires” and much more effectively manage their patient cases.

The clients were extremely happy because we were able to quickly do this for them. They want to be able to put these actions into place in their emergency preparedness plan, so, in the future, if there’s these things, they know these steps to take.   Some of the administrators were out-of-state and they didn’t have access to their computer systems on site. We were able to do this because we’re a cloud-based solution and we have all that information for them.

Sarah Sterling: “Now I’m more comfortable in knowing that I have that feature and I know that we’ll be able to communicate with our patients and so it was very helpful.”

Paula: It was a very easy process for them and they were able to get ahold of us very quickly. Even on a Sunday, I noted that they are calling me from California, so, I answered the phone. I knew they needed help for Monday morning.