How One Seattle Health System Is Managing the Covid-19 Crisis

Swedish Health Services, a mult-hospital health system in Seattle, was at the tip of the spear of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak in 2020. But the organization was better prepared than it might otherwise have been because of an unrelated experience that had just played out across the health system: in January 2020, just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak began, nearly 75% of Swedish’s caregivers went on a three-day strike. After the strike, the organization created an after-action plan to institutionalize learning — and the plan was immediately used when Covid-19 patients began arriving in its emergency rooms. The pillars of this plan were: communicate clearly (a good rule of thumb is that all staff should hear important information seven times in seven different ways); delegate authority (so that front-line staff can innovate quickly during a crisis); and focus on people (by taking steps to prevent burnout). Other companies can use these pillars to create organizational resiliency in the face of Covid-19.