Clinical transformation allows Hospital for Special Surgery to care for New York’s critically ill during the pandemic

March 2020: New York City hospitals were overflowing with COVID-19 patients. Ventilators were in short supply. Ambulances lined the streets.

HSS made an unprecedented pivot during the crisis. The nation’s leading academic medical center specialized in musculoskeletal health transformed to care for the extremely ill.

“This is a ‘we’ story,” says Jamie Nelson, SVP and CIO at HSS. “What our teams did was a professional highlight.”

IT staff and HSS technology partners came to the hospital every day, donned in personal protective gear, to make rapid technology and network changes to support the new requirements of patient care. 

Everyone at HSS pitched in.

“We had surgeons trundling behind anesthesiologists caring for COVID-19 ICU patients in whatever way they could,” Nelson says. “Our clinical team truly worked together.”

Protecting the health and safety of the hospital’s administrative staff was critical. In the past, 200 people might have worked from home on any given day. Now, 2000 staff across finance, marketing, IT, and even clinical care work remotely.

Telehealth visits soared from 1000 in 2019 to 100,000 in 2020. Telehealth allowed HSS to provide important follow-up care for orthopedic patients in their homes.

“Aftercare like physical therapy is almost as important as the surgery itself,” says Nelson. “Having a robust network that could deal with the video streaming that was necessary for telehealth was critically important.”

A strong technology foundation, enabling telehealth, patient telemetry, and hybrid work, continue to be a part of the new normal at HSS.