HSE CASE STUDY: COVID Contact Tracing - Call Centre Setup, Operationalise, and Ongoing Support and Management

PROJECT STORY: HSE COVID Contact Tracing - Call Centre Setup, Operationalise, and Ongoing Support and Management

Outcome

Background

In the early spring of 2020, Irish healthcare was thrown into crisis. COVID-19 numbers were rising sharply, and radical action was required to prevent the Health Service Executive (HSE) being overwhelmed. Based on our track record of delivering extraordinarily challenging projects with multiple stakeholders on time, on budget and with all the promised benefits, VISION Consulting (VISION) was appointed to the role of Mobilization Lead in the nation’s Contact Tracing effort.

Challenges and Opportunities 

VISION’S role was to mobilize the people, training, contact centre infrastructures, ICT solutions, partner networks and critical resources required to ensure the contact centres significantly enhanced the resilience of Ireland’s response to the crisis.

As well as supporting the HSE in working with stakeholders such as the Irish Government, this also involved rapidly developing strong and continuing relationships with the Defense Forces and University College Dublin, as well as other universities and the Revenue Commissioners. 

Working closely with the HSE and the above stakeholders, VISION’s challenge was to establish eight fully operational call centres in locations across the country, with more than 1,400 trained operators.

VISION achieved all of this in just 10 days.

VISION Approach

The role and approach of VISION Consulting was key. Using their experience in responding rapidly to complex change requirements, the team's knowledge of accelerated design thinking, and VISION’s expertise in demonstrating flexibility, speed and agility while working with multiple stakeholders, were all recognised as critical components to the project’s success. An example of this was VISION’s daily operations huddle at 8.30am each morning, seven days a week. The key function of the meeting was to manage the CTC’s daily promise to clear all contact tracing cases uploaded to the Contact Centre Tracking (CCT) system. 

The meeting involved reviewing the activities of the day before, including the number of new cases that came into the system as well as the number of cases processed or completed during that day (in all queues); and looking forward to the day ahead through CTC operational leads confirming or committing to the number of resources they had available and the number of calls they expected those resources to make.

VISION’s expertise and skill also added value in the following key areas:

Service Delivery

Each Contact Tracing Centre (CTC) was established to operate from 8am to 8pm, with the capacity to handle 5,000 calls a day, while covering the following multiple functions:

• Providing a central platform for the sharing of fast-changing data and information.

• Reporting non-complex test results to the public.

• Responding to all non-clinical requests for information and guidance.

• Tracing and contacting anyone potentially at risk of infection. 

• Coordinating support for people and families identified as vulnerable.

• Reporting on volumes, case mix, outcomes, demographics, geographic distribution and infection clusters.

Comparability Narrative of selling points for Office of Government Procurement

This project for the HSE was highly comparable to the requirements of this Lot.  This assignment is most relevant to the following sample project types as listed by the OGP:

• VISION's ability to mobilise the contact centers into action rapidly was crucial to ensure the success of this project. The team recruited and mobilized the first contact center and within 24 hours were making calls. These calls to patients to inform them on their test results and guiding them through what would happen next was vitally important from preventing unnecessary spread of the virus further. 

• Taking the learnings from setting up the first centre the VISION team then recruited, trained and mobilized 7 further centres within 10 days. These learnings enabled the team to design The Conversation Strategy for the patients.

• This strategy was to utilize the trained clinicians for the critical Conversation 1 discussing the test results and how to manage expected symptoms and what to do next and how to self-isolate.

• Then utilize non-clinician staff for Conversations 2 and 3 to discuss close contact and then reach out to citizens on behalf of the patient to go for testing.

• This entire concept of tracing close contact was new to everyone so needed the creativity and agility of the VISION team to design, develop, plan and deliver in action. In wave 1 the team trained 1800 contact tracers to manage up to 5000 calls per day. 

• In order to get these centres up and running within the 10 days that VISION achieved, the engagement with stakeholders daily was critical. VISION’s coordination practices which allow the team to be agile and move quickly into action enabled them to engage and develop trusted relationships within the HSE, the Irish Government, Universities across the country and the revenue commission. 

• To achieve VISION’s daily promise of clearing all contact tracing cases by the end of each day the team designed collaborative working program practices. One of these practices was the daily huddle which involved reviewing the day before activities and gaining commitment from the CTC leads for the day ahead. 

• VISION’s Technical support team used data analytics to review and report non-complex test result data to the public. They were also able by reviewing the volumes received each to create trend forecasting to enable CTCs to plan resource requirements. 

• Data Protection (GDPR) management was critical on this project due to the sensitivity of information being shared with the team. VISIONs Technical Support team regularly reviewed, audited and ensured we complied with all GDPR guidelines at all times throughout the project.