The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic is changing very nearly every aspect of commerce. Some businesses are being hammered and some are doing remarkably well. It’s stressful for all of them, though, and the shutdown has forced industry leaders to adapt quickly and think differently about how they’ll be able to survive in whatever turns out to be the “new normal.”
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Inside Memphis Business talked with five local leaders in key businesses to get an idea of what’s going on and what lies in the future. That’s a challenge even in untroubled times. These days, we can’t know how well controlled the pandemic will be, nor can we be certain of all the variables and conditions in the marketplace.
But business leaders facing a situation that all agree is unprecedented still have to study contingencies and be prepared for whatever may happen in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Read these interviews for insights into the challenges they’re facing.
There are daily stories about the people on the front lines fighting COVID-19, taking on personal risk to fight a stealthy enemy. Many work in hospitals, which by nature are equipped to battle disease, although the scope of this pandemic is forcing institutions to change nimbly.
“It’s insane, these different times that we’re in,” says Michael Ugwueke, president and CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. “So we are adapting very quickly like everyone else.”
Healthcare organizations commonly stage disaster drills for all kinds of situations. “But no one to my knowledge anticipated doing a disaster drill around a pandemic at this level,” he says. “So it was very interesting to see how our team quickly adapted and responded to this. Very early in March, we set up a command center among all our hospitals.” Morning briefings and frequent communications were paramount. Statistics were gathered on activities, patients coming in, being tested, and results tallied. “We quickly ramped up in anticipation and that has really been a blessing.”
Michael Ugwueke
Ugwueke credits the resilience and tenacity of the institution’s employees. Policies were changed as needed, visitations were stopped, retraining of staff was done, and screenings on everyone who came in were mandatory.
“We postponed elective surgeries to create additional capacity if needed, but also to safeguard the staff’s PPEs because you don’t want to not be able to have enough supply if we surge.”
One area of change that Ugwueke points to is the transformation of telehealth. Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare had been doing it, but the changes wrought by the pandemic brought urgency to the use of the technology. Previously, it was largely for stroke and neurology patients, he says, “but very rapidly we scaled up our telehealth system, which was really an opportunity for patients who might be too scared to come in, so they can stay in touch with their physicians.”
Even as the medical process is adapting to respond to the need, the institution itself is seeing fundamental changes. “Overall, business is significantly down,” Ugwueke says. Stopping elective surgeries, necessary as it is, hurts the financial picture. “They have a positive income relative to operations because insurance pays. It’s really impacted hospitals across the country. I get calls pretty much on a daily basis and hear colleagues from all over saying they’re burning through cash on a regular basis. We’ve seen our business drop 30 percent.”
Ugwueke says, with cautious hope, that barring a major outbreak the disruption probably won’t continue through the summer. “If we have enough tests now to begin to do asymptomatic patient testing, I think that will give people a little bit of comfort. We are trying to retool for what that new normal is going to look like. I think we’ll be ready for it.”
