ReSurge International Gains Better Insight on its Programs, while Improving Efficiency
The first organization of its kind, ReSurge International provides free reconstructive surgery for underprivileged children and adults, so they can go to school, provide for their families, and be productive members of society.
Since 1969, ReSurge International has built surgical capacity and provided more than 105,000 surgeries in 15 developing countries. Its vision is a world where all people have access to life-changing reconstructive surgical
care that is safe, timely and affordable.
Despite its long history, ReSurge continues to innovate and expand its services to offer a more comprehensive approach to surgical care. The organization focuses on providing
year-round patient care in the developing countries it serves, training and supporting local doctors to meet the needs of their communities today and for generations to come. And now with LiveImpact technology, the programs
team can have a better understanding of the progress of local surgeons, the work of its medical volunteers, and its impact on patients..
LiveImpact has enabled us to improve engagement with our surgeons and volunteers. Including streamlining our data collection across multiple sites around the world...
Resurge program management team now operates much more efficiently without the need to switch back and forth between platforms, spreadsheets and documents. “LiveImpact built a custom report to track key performance
metrics for our program management. With a few clicks I can accomplish a task that used to take hours. Our overall accuracy of data reporting has improved significantly.”
Medical volunteers, and developing
country surgeons can also log into one system to accomplish most of their tasks. “As we launched the LiveImpact system we received positive feedback from our medical volunteers on the ease of filling an online
form and submitting the patient and trip information, compared with our previous process, which required them to keep track of various documents. And our local surgeons can search patient records and get all
the information they need in one place. The ease and simp licity of the platform has been a big factor in its quick adoption by my team members, our medical volunteers and local surgeons."
Resurge also designed a Training Milestone Scale in LiveImpact, to follow the progress of surgeons and medical volunteers who train the local surgeons. With this tool Resurge can assess the trainees and understand who are the most effective trainers. As a result, Resurge is continuously improving both program management and the quality of programs offered to the local surgeons.
With all the information in one platform, Resurge is able to run reports on the outcomes of surgeries to understand the real impact the organization is making in a patient’s life, keeping with its vision to offer free reconstructive surgeries to underprivileged children and adults so they can be productive members of society.
“LiveImpact has enabled us to engage with our surgeons and medical volunteers in a more strategic and personal way, and we can better understand the impact of our programs on the daily lives of patients,” said Covington.
The LiveImpact team spent time with us detailing what the platform could do and how we could configure it to meet our requirements end to end during the entire onboarding process...
“We knew from the start that our requirements were unique, requiring a highly customizable and flexible system that could be designed not only to import the disparate data from seven different systems, but also meet our evolving future needs,” said Woodrow Covington, Associate Director of Medical Programs and Impact, Resurge International. “We wanted an organization that could work with us to configure the platform to meet our needs. With LiveImpact, Our overall accuracy of data reporting has improved significantly, and cost. Usability was very important, as the platform had to be easy to use by our medical volunteers and local surgeons in the fifteen developing countries where we operate.”
Before moving to LiveImpact, Resurge was collecting data in seven different tools. For different types of surgeries three different patient databases were used, including an aging proprietary database – the data was segmented and no comparable were available across the organization...
Additionally, for some of the tools, data entry itself was challenging. Medical training teams collect two types of data on each patient treated during training (which was stored in a patient database), and data on each trainee’s progress (which
was stored in a separate system). This created headaches. According to Covington, “The medical training teams did not even save the patient records into a database. Instead they sent in trip reports as Word
documents for staff at headquarters to enter into a spreadsheet manually. The trainee milestones were submitted as PDF document, which headquarters staff had to upload into a Filemaker Pro system.”
To get a clear picture of what had been accomplished annually or quarterly, Resurge Program Management team members had to look in at least three different systems/tools, then move the data into one
spreadsheet and go through a lot of maneuvering. “Our goal was to bring it all into one platform,” said Covington.
The decision to choose - LiveImpact came down to its functionality, coupled with the low cost and the support received prior to and during onboarding. “The LiveImpact team spent time with us detailing what the platform could do and how we could configure it to meet our requirements. During the onboarding process we kept tweaking our requirements but continued to receive excellent support and responsiveness from LiveImpact. They understood our needs and shared best practices with us, which was very valuable in deciding the platform design,” said Woodrow. “Importing more than 20,000 records and 50,000 images from seven different platforms was a huge challenge and with LiveImpact’s support we accomplished the task successfully.”