There is no playbook for restarting a $9.4 billion health care enterprise. We have been in health care for decades, and worked through the HIV/AIDS crisis, 9/11, and the Ebola scare feeling pretty confident that we and our colleagues knew what to do next. But when it comes to restarting our clinical enterprise now that the first phase of Covid-19 crisis is beginning to clear, we are learning and adapting every day.

We began by establishing a Restart Coordination Committee with two physician organizations affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian to guide the process: ColumbiaDoctors and Weill Cornell Medicine (both large multispecialty faculty practices). The committee is composed of an executive group governing six subcommittees focused on Procedures and Diagnostics, Surgery, Office Visits, Med/Surg and ICU, Faculty and Trainees, and Administrative Operations and Staffing. In the short term, we must focus on two key questions: What will consumers and providers demand of their health system after Covid-19, and how do we instill in them a sense of confidence and trust? As we move ahead, we will be guided by a set of action items.