Diagnosing the Hidden Constraint Behind a COVID Crisis
When Everything Was Moving — but Nothing Was Working
This was a moment made for a Diagnostician.
The system wasn’t broken — but it was failing, fast. When COVID hit, our telehealth platform went from handling hundreds of visits a day to tens of thousands almost overnight. Patients couldn’t get through. Calls dropped. Physicians timed out. Support queues overflowed. The default assumption was clear: we’d hit a capacity wall.
Every team leapt into action. Engineering scrambled to scale infrastructure. Ops triaged support. Product patched the user experience. But despite everyone’s effort, nothing moved fast enough — because we weren’t solving the same problem. The system was in motion — but misfiring. Alignment had quietly unraveled. That’s when I stepped in.
The Diagnostician’s Role
I pulled cross-functional leads into a war room and paused the reactive scramble. Before throwing more effort at the fire, I asked a single question: “What exactly is driving this overload?” Not what it looked like — what was actually underneath it? That question changed everything.
The Diagnosis
We discovered that a massive share of demand wasn’t from patients seeking care — it was from people trying to access COVID testing. At the time, testing access was limited and confusing. Many were routed into virtual visits not because they needed a doctor, but because the system didn’t offer another way in. It wasn’t a bandwidth failure. It was a triage failure — the hidden constraint behind the chaos.
The Response
Found the Root Constraint
We traced the overload not to clinical volume, but to routing failure — the system didn’t distinguish care needs from information needs.
Redirected Non-Clinical Traffic
We launched a self-service testing flow to absorb and reroute testing-related demand outside the care queue.
Rebalanced System Load
We adjusted pricing to prioritize clinical time, and introduced time-based nudges to flatten usage spikes and stabilize throughput.
The Results
- 40% reduction in unnecessary virtual visits
- System stability restored within days
- Clinician burnout reduced, patient experience improved
- Teams moved from parallel reactions to focused, coordinated progress
That’s the role I play when systems stall. I diagnose the root constraint, realign the moving parts, and reconnect the system — so it can breathe again.