Hawaii Medical Service Association, or HMSA, late last year was able to utilize existing technology to support a companywide Covid-19 vaccine mandate for its employees.
Rather than input data manually, the automated workflow process likely saved the company and its employees hundreds of hours in inputting, tracking and validating information on employee vaccinations and exemptions.
Rick Hopfer, senior vice president and chief information officer for HMSA, told Pacific Business News that when Covid-19 vaccines came out, many companies started looking at whether to track or mandate vaccines for employees.
HMSA began looking at how its technologies could help the organization understand and manage a vaccine mandate.
"The (IT) team quickly responded," Hopfer said. "They worked with our HR group and came up with a solution leveraging our existing technology platforms with ServiceNow, so we had technology in place, but what we needed do quickly was come up with a very simple, self-service way for our employees to help us track vaccination statuses."
Trisha Goya, director of IT Client Services at HMSA, said the vaccine requirement developed quickly.
"It was one of these situations where there was a business need [and] a very short time frame to get it implemented, so we looked around to see what kind of platforms exist that had the right level of security, [that] we could do ... quickly, [that] we could get engagement, and was easy for people to just use without a ton of training.
"You don't have the time and you don't have that luxury," she said. "[HMSA] looked across the board, across the different applications that we have and really ServiceNow, for what we needed it to do really was the right fit, to meet the business need and solve the problem we were trying to solve very quickly."
HMSA made the announcement about mandatory vaccinations for employees on Aug. 9, and Ailin John, senior manager, IT Client Solutions, said the automated workflow deployed Aug. 23.
With the new workflow, employees could upload a copy of their vaccination record or an exemption to be verified.
HMSA had about 1,800 employees to verify, John said, and approximately 725 were able to submit the first day. Of those,100% were validated by HR.
John said historically for this kind of effort, information would have been submitted and verified manually, which would mean getting the information and rekeying it into a spreadsheet or other document before being verified.
Instead of HR manually inputting the information, those employees could work on a "higher value activity."
"One of the things that really benefits from workflow automation is you want to minimize the number of times you're repeating that data entry of the same information, and when you have one platform that we already had all of our employee base in that platform ... [we] really already leveraged information that we had and just built upon it very quickly and securely," she said. "To be able to do this without having to touch something multiple times, that's, I think, the real value of workflow automation."
John estimates that HMSA likely saved "hundreds of hours" with the automated workflow.
Manual efforts would have taken a "couple minutes per person," while validation with the automated workflow took about 30 seconds.
John said there was no additional cost for HMSA to implement this workflow because the company used licenses it already owned and personnel already on staff.
HMSA also has automated HR, procurement, vendor management and internal IT processes, Hopfer said.
The company will share how it leveraged workflow automation technology to manage its vaccination requirements at a free pau hana networking event hosted by TRUE, a nonprofit organization that aims to accelerate the adoption of technology in Hawaii.
The event will be held from 3:15 to 6 p.m. Thursday, March 31, at the Central Pacific Bank Plaza lobby atrium, 220 S. King St., Honolulu.
Tickets and more information can be found online.
