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photo courtesy Tacoma News Tribune, 2025
Staff and patient safety are at risk when traveling during weather events or other emergencies. Medical facilities have a responsibility to keep patients safe by warning them not to travel when clinics are closed.A 200-clinic system had no approval process, tracking, executive all-up view, or public notice of late-starts and closures.Utilizing existing tools, I built a process to standardize real-time reporting, enable pop-up approvals, and show executives an immediate bird's-eye overview of costly schedule reductions— supporting business needs, safety & access to real-time actionable info across stakeholder groups.
CLIENT: PROVIDENCE SWEDISH MEDICAL GROUPGOAL: Enable real-time closure requests, approvals and publication on morning of weather events.AUDIENCE: 3,600 daily patients, 25,000 clinic staff, publicTOOLS/CHANNELS: MS SharePoint, MS Teams, MS Forms, MS Lists, MS PowerAutomate, MS Approvals, Uberflip blogSPONSORS: Chief Operating Officer, Safety OfficerTEAMS ENGAGED: Directors of operations, clinic managers
RESULTS: Reduced 3,900 staff hours and $186k staff cost per weather/emergency event.
Total savings almost $1M per year.
Approach
Approach
SMG Weather Flow (1).pngAfter being engaged by the Safety Officer, I asked clarifying questions about existing systems, processes and goals. I then reviewed existing assets for simplification opportunities.
Based on process gaps and pain points identified, I brainstormed possible process improvements available within our existing technology stack.
A mockup reporting form and operations center I built within MS Teams was presented to stakeholders for comments & approval.
Based on feedback, I built out the assets, automated workflows, and beta tested the system, debugged automation code, and set the process live for weather events.
Iterations and improvements to the system have been added each year.
Operations Center
Operations Center
A problem facing the org was a multiplicity of SharePoint pages, hyperlinks, and other resources that are difficult to find for users.
To avoid this, we built the Operations Control center in MS Teams, where it will remain in the sidebar of invited users.
Menu items are intentionally presented left-to-right, so users can progress through the steps & locate tools based on their decision-making stage.
Weather-Control Ctr (Teams) (2).png
Staff UX
Staff UX
Designed within the constraints of pre-existing Microsoft 0365 stack
Form Sm Top.pngApproval Pop-up.pngApproval Dialog 2.pngReporting form allows asynchronous entry and contains a variety of choice, multi-select and free-text fields.
Clinic names are entered as a dropdown to ensure consistency/elimination of jargon and use of public-friendly names on website.
Director approval notices pop-up in any MS app, and on phones if enabled.
Approval dialog is built using SQL and dynamic Power Automate fields for a clean look.
Closure Decisions.pngDirector decisions are automatically input to the MS List so COO can easily see & sign off on decisions during morning meeting.
Final decisions are preserved/notated for easy interpretation by web team updating blog.
Automation
Automation
Built using Microsoft Power Automate. Diagrammed using Figma.
SMG Weather Power Automate_Annote.pngBehind the scenes, a number of Microsoft 0365 tools are linked interactively to achieve the low-impact user experience.
With Power Automate as the backbone, the visible MS List has all clinics pre-entered ,ensuring that helpful static information--such as address, normal hours and clinic leadership--accompanies any incoming reports.
When the form is submitted, Power Automate then updates select columns for the dropdown-chosen clinic within the MS list, with the MS Form inputs.
To achieve this:
Clinic names entered into the pre-set Microsoft List rows are copied verbatim into a dropdown list in MS Forms
The same form can be used to report clinics, or to issue an "All Clear," which resets the dynamic columns back to empty
The same "reset" result can be achieved using a separate json-formatted MS List column containing a red button called "Clear." Any administrator can click the Clear button to reset the dynamic fields, an action also built in Power Automate.
RESULTS
RESULTS
SAVINGS PER EVENT
3,900 Staff hours
$186,000 staff cost
SAVINGS PER YEAR
Nearly 20,000 staff hours
Nearly $1,000,000 staff cost
BEFORE comms operalization, implementaiton this 200-clinic system did not centrally notify staff or patients.
Internal coordination among teams via email involved avg. 45 minute meeting and 0.75-1.5 hrs per impacted staff member, depending on role
AFTER comms operalization, automated reporting and approvals reduced avg. staff time to 6-15 minutes per role.
Consolidated reporting also enabled streamlined reporting to public & staff of real-time closures/delays, reducing risk of dangerous travel.
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