Keeping two clinics open in spring 2020
Sep 2018 – Feb 2021
Paris
Operations Manager
Cliniques Verdier
2 years 6 months
Eleven days of masks, a fifth of the nurses off sick and a decision about closing a site. What we did, and the parts I would keep.
On 16 March 2020 we had eleven days of masks at the Paris clinics and a rota built for an ordinary spring. Within two weeks about a fifth of the nursing staff were off. The question was whether to close one site and move everyone to the other.
One list, read twice a day
We stopped running the week from the planning meeting. The two head nurses and I read one list at eight and at two: who was in, what stock we had, which appointments could wait. It was a shared sheet with four columns, and it was enough.
Splitting the teams
We split each site into two teams that never overlapped, so one positive test could not take out a whole shift. On paper that cost us about 15% of our capacity. In practice it is the reason both clinics stayed open: when a team did go down in April, the other carried on.
What I kept
We kept the twice-daily list through the summer, then moved it to weekly. The on-call rules we rewrote with the medical staff that spring are still in use. I would not keep the hours.