Editor’s Note: The following is adapted from an article originally published in Business Voice magazine, a publication of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce. The author, Anita Swamy, is Vice-President Operations, Medavie Blue Cross.

The pandemic has urged businesses and governments to modernize and provide consumers with new digital offerings – and in some cases providing faster solutions. Decisions that have historically taken years of deliberation have been realized in weeks and even sometimes days. Consumer behaviour has shifted, and, in many cases, new online services and product offerings will be here to stay.

Like many of you, we’ve been focused on providing greater flexibility, offering more options to our clients and members, while supporting our communities. We hope our contributions – lowering premiums for small- and medium sized businesses, offering more virtual health care options and our $5 million Medavie Health Foundation contribution to improving access to food and mental health support – have helped ease the burden.

As restrictions are cautiously lifted, we won’t be rushing back to our offices, but will be thoughtful about our return to ensure the wellbeing our staff and all Canadians, including supporting those on the front lines by helping further reduce community spread. We will continue to adapt and be flexible, reflecting our employees’ preferences in the way we work.

And beyond this, we will continue to reimagine ourselves – through things like increased automation and digitization – to ensure we are best meeting the needs of our employees, plan members, clients, partners and communities.

Recovery is not about going back to the past, but rather, gives us the opportunity to look at how we continue to move forward. For businesses, it’s an opportunity to assess corporate priorities – what to accelerate, what to eliminate and what new opportunities exist. For healthcare stakeholders and decision-makers, it’s an opportunity to advance health care in our country and bring care to patients in our communities, offering more access points to care.

While there are many things that we all want to see go back to how they were pre-COVID, at Medavie, we are hopeful that the accelerated collaboration and innovation that became necessary through this crisis is a “new normal” and an even more exciting way of operating in the future.

To read the full article click here.