Engineering Impact: Our Ongoing COVID-19 Response

COVID-19 spurred collaboration and inspired us to reach new levels of innovation. We moved quickly and decisively, in partnership with the Medtronic Foundation, to lessen the impact of the pandemic on our employees, patients, and healthcare professionals, and global communities. An overview of our key actions follows, with more details about our pandemic response included throughout this report.

Employees and their families

At the outset of the pandemic, we swiftly distributed resources to support our global workforce. Our broad response prioritized safety, flexible work arrangements, work-life balance, and employees’ overall well-being. Actions in FY21 include:

• Employee telehealth services were expanded in many countries and no-cost COVID-19 testing and treatment were provided through employees’ Medtronic medical plan; employees also participated in more than 5,300 virtual counseling sessions provided through the Medtronic Employee Assistance program.
• Medtronic Employee Emergency Assistance Fund provided more than 600 grants to employees experiencing financial hardship, including help with childcare, medical, and day-to-day expenses.
• Childcare stipend and call-to-action bonuses were provided for onsite, business-critical employees in the United States to help cover alternative childcare costs due to school and daycare closures.
• Emergency leave pay was provided to employees unable to perform their jobs remotely or during quarantines, school or childcare closures, or a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Patients and healthcare professionals

To meet the staggering demand for some of our lifesaving medical devices — such as ventilators, remote patient monitoring technologies, pulse oximeters, and more — we created new ways to work safer, smarter, and faster. In addition to making the design files for our Puritan Bennett™ 560 (PB560) ventilator system publicly available, we increased ventilator manufacturing fivefold to meet time-sensitive demand. Actions in FY21 include:

• Telehealth solutions to help clinicians deliver remote quality care, including Bluetooth enabled heart devices and remotely operable ventilators
• COVID-19 Recovery Resource Center for online access to solutions, programs, and best practices for communities and partners as they navigate evolving challenges
• Support for “Don’t Die of Doubt,” a public health education campaign led by the American Heart Association on the risks of delaying emergency treatment for signs of a heart attack or stroke
• Securing an Emergency Use Authorization from the United States FDA for several of our medical devices to help treat COVID-19 patients, including the PB560 ventilator

Global communities

Medtronic and the Medtronic Foundation continue to partner with nonprofits, government agencies, and other companies on COVID-19 relief. Support is focused on underserved communities and those disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, such as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities in the United States, and countries that experienced explosive surges of COVID-19, such as Brazil and India. Actions in FY21 include:

• Medtronic and Medtronic Foundation partner's assistance to underserved and disproportionately affected communities that included emergency meals, ongoing hunger relief, mental health support, health worker grants, operational support, in-kind personal protective equipment (PPE), and more
• Medical equipment and supply deliveries to the nonprofit International Medical Corps for COVID-19 response in the United States and Puerto Rico, including 1.1 million surgical masks and more than 400,000 KN95 masks
• Expanded access to Medtronic Assurance, with a new option to support customers with diabetes who lost health insurance due to a COVID-19-related job loss
• The Medtronic Foundation continued to invest in and empower community health workers to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic response, including equitable access

Read report