Helping WEDCO Help Their Community During the Pandemic
WEDCO is one of 61 health departments in Kentucky, serving Harrison, Scott and Nicholas Counties. The staff at WEDCO strive to provide population health based services, research and policy on a regular basis. WEDCO having the first case of COVID-19 in KY on March 6, 2020, they are now heavily involved in COVID response at all levels, including testing, disease investigation, community policy development, enforcement as well as vaccine delivery. Fortunately, they had partnered with us to install a new Mitel phone system just months before that. According to Rachel Kendall, Administrative Services Manager, their processes and services have been evolving and their team has been “pivoting on a moment’s notice” as the roles and responsibilities of Covid response evolve. When they needed a way to better answer the influx of calls or get messages out to their citizens, we were happy to help them.
Rachel also noted that the system has completely evolved along with their responses to demands and continues to change almost daily as they strive to “show up for the citizens of our community”. They often handle more than 1000 calls daily at each of their 3 locations with a staff of only 40. By tweaking the configuration of their system as needed over the past 11 months we’ve given the staff at WEDCO tools to better serve their community.
Communication is rapidly changing and it is of upmost importance to have real time information on the phone systems. When WEDCO needs to get a new announcement out quickly, Unified has been able to jump in and edit announcements and call flow to accommodate all changes and events, including inclement weather. We have been honored to assist the valiant efforts of the WEDCO team during unbelievable times.
Dr. Miller, Public Health Director, stated, “We depend on systems for communication and information delivery now more than ever, due to the rapid and evolving nature of this pandemic. It is imperative that our customer service is top notch and Unified has helped us do that professionally and efficiently. Unified partnering with us prior to the pandemic has proven to be an unexpected blessing. They have given us the technological support to continue to serve our communities in the most important time for public health.”
