In any given year, the 50,000 employees of BrightSpring® Health Services improve the lives of millions of people in high-need populations across the US. As a leading provider of home and community-based health services for people with complex care needs, BrightSpring offers home health care, hospice care, neurorehabilitation, assisted living, job placement, and other essential services to the most vulnerable segments of society.
And although the company has been serving people in at-risk populations for nearly half a century, the circumstances of 2020 meant that BrightSpring’s millions of patients and clients needed the company’s services more than ever.
Thankfully, even though some BrightSpring teams across the country had to work from home during COVID, the company was able to continue providing essential services without interruption. This was enabled in part to their cloud phone solution.
A team member working from home, but still supporting clients
Travis McCreary is the IT Project and Support Manager for Equus Workforce Solutions, a BrightSpring affiliate that offers employment and training services. Equus, in fact, is a leading workforce solutions company with hundreds of locations nationwide serving more than a million job seekers every year.
When the lockdowns forced millions of people out of their jobs, the Equus team was inundated with requests for help. As Travis notes, even though many of their own offices had been forced to shut down, the team was still there for the job seekers who were counting on them.
“A lot of the credit for the smoothness of the remote-work transition goes to RingCentral,” Travis says. “Having that solution in place, where everyone could handle calls and join meetings from the RingCentral desktop and mobile apps, meant we were able to move very easily and very quickly from the office to working from home.”
Joe Deaton, the VoIP Engineer who handles communications for several of BrightSpring’s affiliates, points out another benefit of having been able to use the RingCentral cloud solution during the office closures.
“We’ve now had the experience of staying productive and connected while a lot of our sites across the country were forced into remote work,” Joe explains. “Now we know for sure that, yes, we could handle a future lockdown without losing productivity—and even that one of our locations could easily transition to working at home if COVID ever hit their office.”
Providing life-changing services to society’s most vulnerable
In one heartwarming example of BrightSpring’s use of cloud communications to help people in need during COVID, Travis explains how RingCentral has been playing a role in the company’s emergency housing efforts.
“When the pandemic hit, we were awarded a government contract in San Diego to help the homeless population find emergency housing,” he says. “Our employees are tasked with outreaching to people living on the streets, helping them get tested for COVID, and then supporting them to find shelter.”
But as Travis explains, those employees don’t have fixed office space. They’re operating out of a hotel and spending their time in the field looking for people to help. “We’re able to stay in constant communication with those employees, and they’re able to connect with each other because they all have the RingCentral mobile app on their phones. This solution is allowing us to do important work for the populations we’re committed to helping.”
Originally published Oct 21, 2021
