A Lot of Planning, a Little Luck in the Battle Against COVID-19

When Salus University president Michael Mittelman, OD ‘80, MPH, MBA, FAAO, FACHE, traveled to China in December 2019, he started seeing articles about a new virus called COVID-19 that was concerning to Chinese health officials. 

As a healthcare professional, Dr. Mittelman kept tracking the spread of the virus when he returned home and continued to do so through the first few months of 2020. He suggested in his weekly messages to students, faculty, staff and alumni, that it was just a matter of time before the virus would have to be more directly confronted in the United States.

And, it wasn’t long before it happened.

The University issued its initial COVID-19 guidelines on March 5, 2020, followed by travel and meeting restrictions for employees five days later. 

On March 12, Dr. Mittelman and President’s Council believed the spread of the virus to the Northeast portion of the U.S. was serious enough that administration needed to get people off campus and announced didactic instruction would go online effective March 16. 

The next day, Friday, March 13, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf shut down the state and sent all non-essential personnel to work from home, suggesting the virus could be under control within a few weeks. 

“I didn’t think it was only going to last the two weeks that Gov. Wolf had suggested. I thought we’d go eight to 10 weeks, we’d get this thing in the bag and then we’d slowly be able to get back to normal,” said Dr. Mittelman. “Obviously, things went off the rails in New York, which directly affected us. And, remember what was happening internationally, in Italy and Spain and the other places. I realized this was going to be a long haul.” 

In addition to the safety of the Salus family, an immediate concern was how would the University keep educating its students during the pandemic?

Quite effectively, it turned out, under the circumstances. In fact, when the Elkins Park campus and The Eye Institute (TEI) were shut down on that Friday, it took the University just two days over the weekend to pivot to online learning. 

“Kudos to the faculty and the students for doing that. I never doubted them, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be as seamless as it went,” said Dr. Mittelman. “There were some hiccups along the way, but frankly, the faculty who pivoted, the facilities folks and security folks who actually made us safer and then over-arching leadership team that I have working with me are the heroes. That’s why this worked.”

One of the keys to the transition to online learning, according to Chris Esposito, director of the University’s Network and Security Services, was that while the University wasn’t necessarily prepared for a pandemic, it had for the past several years been working toward 24/7 support for its systems. This put the information technology crew in a good position to support the Salus community at home.

That wasn’t without its challenges, though. 

“We had to quickly pivot from onsite support to remote support, which comes with its share of challenges,” said Esposito. “For one, we’re not aware of the environment in users’ homes. For example, we don’t know how reliable their internet connection is; what their computer specifications were; and what other software they had on their machines. It’s something we call ‘flying blind’ in our field. And, then we had to balance user connectivity while keeping our eye on security and protecting the University’s network systems and data.”

Esposito believes the University’s recent data center updates provided the systems with a solid foundation. 

“Salus has invested greatly in technology and security, particularly over the past several years, which gave us eyes on potential issues before they became problems,” said Esposito.

But the main challenge was supporting the users. Since the University had already made its learning cloud-based, the professors then needed to be equipped with Panopto — a recording software — in order to to record their lectures from home, which the University started before the shutdown. 

Globally, there was a shortage of laptops at the start of the pandemic because everybody was trying to buy them. The University repurposed old, “retired” laptops and mobile devices and upgraded them for users who didn’t have PCs or laptops at home. 

“We did that from day one,” said Esposito. “We turned into sort of a laptop depot for a couple weeks where new hires or employees who needed laptops would contact us. We’d then build one for them, get them on the VPN and then support them remotely if they had problems.”

Decisions continued to be made as the pandemic raged on.

“We’ve been pretty lucky because I think the decisions we’ve made along the way for the most part were pretty much on target,” said Dr. Mittelman.  “I think we were a little lucky, but we’ve all worked together long enough now, we’re very comfortable with each other, and we were able to do some very good deliberate planning, have very candid conversations, and lay things out the way we thought they were and then move ahead.”

One of the most difficult decision for administration, and one that was made early on March 17, was to announce spring commencement would be virtual and not in-person. 

“I knew when I made the decision to take the spring graduation and make that virtual it would be controversial,” said Dr. Mittelman. “But I also knew — or at least believed based on the data we had at the time — that there was no way we were going to be able to safely congregate large groups of people in May. I think once you explain to people why you made a decision, they may not agree with you but I think reasonable and rational heads prevail.”

Throughout the summer and into the fall, the administration engaged in scenario planning, discussing multiple scenarios based upon various dates to reopen both campuses as well as scenarios of different-sized groups that would be allowed to return.

Getting small groups back on campus and into the clinical facilities safely in the fall became the primary responsibility of the security and facilities departments. 

Richard Echevarria, Physical Plant director, and his staff, had a jump start on the pandemic. In late March and early April, University officials realized in order to open the University back up at some point, planning was critical.

Echevarria ordered screenings tents, PPEs and Plexiglas dividers, so everything would already be in place before students, faculty and staff were able to return to campus. 

Carlos Rodriguez, director of the Department of Safety and Security, and Echevarria then worked with Esposito and the University’s chief of staff, Brian Zuckerman, to come up with a safety strategy.

Entry and exit doors were designated. Signs and arrows were placed on the ground directing those on campus to walk only in a certain direction and to maintain social distancing. Signs were placed on elevators limiting the number to two riders.  Mask and hand-washing reminders, along with additional hand sanitizing dispensers, were placed throughout both campuses. 

They looked at how students would enter and exit the buildings and assigned security with screening protocols. 

“My focus really was to contain the entry points. I didn’t want multiple entry points into the school because then people bypass the screening,” said Rodriguez. “It was important that we focused on what would be easier.”

An online questionnaire was also instituted for everyone who had business on campus, where health questions were asked of each individual. Those that completed the online questionnaire — and who's health situation had not changed in the interim — did not have to answer those questions when being screened at the door, making that process go more quickly and smoothly. 

The plan behind the entry and exit point screenings was for contact tracing to be conducted if necessary. Wireless readers and readers affixed to the buildings are used – the scanning of University IDs track who has entered and left any building during a given day or week.  

The situation remained fluid well into the fall, as the U.S. continued to struggle with containing the virus. Once students and faculty returned on a limited basis, the facilities department modified its cleaning schedule and staffing. 

“We’ve doubled our daytime staff to make sure we’re sanitizing all the touchpoints and hitting the restrooms every hour,” said Echevarria. “We installed sanitizing equipment in all of the rooms used by the faculty, staff and students and we’re cleaning the labs in between use.” 

New Student Orientation in August was a combination of virtual and small-group meetings. Fall commencement was once again virtual rather than in-person. 

But the administration has remained proactive rather than reactive.

“We’ve been looking at different scenarios and what-ifs. If X happens, we already have a plan. If Y happens, we already have a plan,” said Dr. Mittelman. “I think we’re well-positioned to deal with any number of different contingencies because we have talked about it, we have looked at it. We have a plan on paper that says OK, this is what we’re going to do and this is where we’ll take some hits. We know that.”

And, that’s not all. The planning includes a look beyond the pandemic.

“These are the discussions we’re having now: How do we make ourselves more broadly appealable? How do we make ourselves more attractive? But most importantly, how do we make ourselves more resilient to things that will affect us externally and that we can’t control?” said Dr. Mittelman. “The post-pandemic planning is just as important as the pre-pandemic planning. You have to be ready for the next one because it will happen again.”