Carolyn Chandler & Fabiana Saad, Nurse Practitioners
Boston, MA
Carolyn Chandler, Nurse Practitioner
Fabiana Saad, Nurse Practitioner
Firefly Health
Boston, MA
Carolyn Chandler and Fabiana Saad are nurse practitioners (NP) and primary care providers (PCPs).
Many health care systems and providers scrambled to stand up telehealth during the early days of the pandemic. However, at Firefly Health—a Massachusetts-based virtual-first primary care and behavioral health company—Carolyn, Fabiana, and the Firefly clinical team were at the forefront of a ground-breaking telehealth model.
Fabiana: “In other practices, NPs often see overflow. Firefly is trying to have NPs be the PCP. We are not the backup. We’re the frontrunners.”
Because Firefly skipped the “scramble to telehealth” phase, they were able to put together a comprehensive action plan as the coronavirus began to spread across the globe.
Carolyn: “In the beginning, crafting triage protocols, processes, and screening tools required a lot of thought. We had to reconcile guidelines from multiple sources that kept changing. Since testing supplies were limited, we were faced with making strategic decisions about who we’d send for testing and who we wouldn’t.”
Managing preventative care alongside life-threatening COVID-19 symptoms is critical as the world continues to reel from the pandemic’s impact.
Carolyn: “For a lot of people, texting us via our app to have reassurance is comforting. In a time like this, it’s easy to just focus on the data and numbers and forget about patient experience. As nurses, that’s what we’re good at.”
Fabiana: “People are now somewhat forced to see providers virtually; I hope this changes the conversation around healthcare delivery norms. Why not just start new and teach people a different model?”
