While the announcement by Governor Inslee mandating a stay-at-home order will have a sweeping effect in our community, I am here to say to you, members of our community, our clients, our outstanding team members, and our partners, Sound remains committed to supporting our clients and their families through this crisis. We are not going anywhere.
Sound is putting people first.
As a healthcare organization, we are among the essential businesses that must stay open, to provide support to our community’s most vulnerable people. The past weeks have prepared us well to handle the unprecedented changes taking place and we have continued to evolve the ways we can best support our community while ensuring the safety of our team members.
We have adopted the Sound Urgent Care Model, which enables us to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, expediting our clients to the specific services they need, when they need them. Though we have used telehealth platforms for years, recently reduced restrictions by Washington State ensured that our clients can now have greater access to their clinicians via FaceTime, Skype, on the telephone and other platforms.
Our teams meet daily to discuss ways to enhance and improve care to our clients and our teams hold a “Daily Check-In” with our clients to ensure that they are managing life in this new reality. We also take care of one another, frequently Skyping, texting and calling each other to ensure that we are all holding up. We continually share Self Care and Mindfulness tips to team members via Zoom and through email.
Though we are adapting new processes and leveraging technology to continue our work, I want to take a moment to address our courageous, resilient and outstanding team members. Our team members continue to do heroic work, though it is a struggle adapting to the daunting homeschooling duties foisted upon them, caring for loved ones at home, learning to work in shifts on-site and learning to navigate client care remotely.
We adhere to the highest standards of safety for our teams, like any healthcare worker who must undergo the stresses of working in uncertain conditions, attempting to create an environment of calm and stability. These team members are unsung heroes in our community and I am deeply appreciative and proud of the work they are doing under incredibly difficult situations.
Sound’s management team is committed to supporting our team members. Thanks to investments over the years that enable us to remain financially stable, we will continue to pay those team members who cannot work due to any reason related to COVID-19. Those team members will continue to be paid in full, even after all paid sick time has been used. We also are empowering team members to use paid administrative time if they are not able to work due to childcare issues related to school closings, ensuring that they continue to have a paycheck during this crisis.
With almost daily changes taking place in healthcare these days, Sound’s clinical and operations teams have more than risen to the occasion. We have continued to be there for our community’s most vulnerable people; people struggling with anxiety and trauma, people surviving domestic violence, people with addiction and struggling with homelessness.
We must continue on, we are first responders, our clients and community need us now more than ever. We have important lifesaving work to do.
I am proud of the team members who work here and I am so privileged to be the President & CEO of this amazing organization. #WeGotThisSound!
Patrick C. Evans
If you need help, please call us today at 206-302-2300.
