FAQ #40: November 19, 2020 – Containing Answers from November 17th
Answers to Staff Questions on Employee Health and Safety, Patient Care and Clinical, and HR Policies
The following FAQs were adapted from questions submitted by VNSNY staff for the CEO Conference Calls hosted by Marki Flannery on Tuesday, November 17th.
Patient Care and Clinical
Q. Good morning since it was suggested to patients that the clinician can provide them with a mask, if they don’t have one will we be getting more than ten masks a week?
A. Tony Dawson, Vice President for Quality and Customer Experience: So we have masks available. In fact, Sal Bastardi just gave out some masks this morning that we‘re going to distribute to the distribution centers. We got some donations of some nice cloth masks that we can give to you to give to patients to wear during their visits. And if you don’t have those, you can also give the patient a regular facemask. And we should be encouraging patients as much as we can to be using a mask when we are visiting those patients each and every time.
Q. Are phone numbers blocked for the patient to be motivated to call our main number and to protect our privacy? That is understandable and I agree 100%. The issue is that patients or family members won’t answer calls from no caller ID. They can get the phone stamp. Can our phone ID be changed to read VNSNY instead of no caller ID?
A. Michael Bernstein, Chief Administrative Office: I want to share with the person who asked this question and with others that unfortunately at the moment it is a yes or a no which is to say that either we unblock caller IDs or we don’t.
If you unblock the caller ID what appears is the clinician’s phone number and not our name VNSNY. And at the moment it is impossible to change from the clinician’s phone number appearing to just the letters VNSNY. So that’s part of the difficulty here.
As an individual — like the individual who asked this question — there are two ways you can choose to turn the ID block off. One is through our service desk and the other is by pressing star 82 before dialing the number, which would make your number visible to the person you’re calling.
But at the moment, the person who asked this question has identified the true hurdle because patient’s family members do not answer the phone when they see unknown caller. But at the same time, the solution of having it say VNSNY is not something offered by Verizon.
So on a case-by-case basis through your supervisor if you want to have your caller ID block turned off so that the people you’re dealing with can see that it’s you calling, that can be done again through our service desk or through a parallel process. Talk directly to your supervisor and then that can be done.
Q. If VNSNY staff unblock their individual VNSNY cell phones by pressing Star 82 it defeats the purpose of protecting clinician privacy and patient access. If there’s a workaround to have the call center phone number populated instead, please send agency-wide instructions so we all know how.
A. Michael Bernstein: Well what I would say since this is happening in real-time is that both that question and the comment before are very reasonable in terms of the rationale for why we have blocked the phone numbers in the first place. The prior questioner was a person who in our hospice unit who might have a need in the near term where they don’t want their phone number blocked.
With respect to this idea of a workaround to press buttons to have the call center phone number populate, from what I know at the moment, unfortunately that’s not possible based on how Verizon delivers service to mobile devices. But it’s a creative solution that we will take back and see because those involved here have identified a real dilemma, a real problem.
How do we get through to our patients so that they answer the calls without providing the phone numbers of yours so that they call you constantly? And we’ll work through this particular suggestion to see where it lands. Thank you.
Q. Any plans for computer systems replacement regards to the home care home base tablet?
A. Michael Bernstein: while I’m not specifically in the IT area, we did ask for an answer to this question in advance in order to try to share. And what we know at the moment is we have no indications from home care home base that new tablets are required to run the point care application.
And so if the person who asked the question does experience certain pain points in using the existing tablet then our IT staff, particularly Michael Orlando or Robert Orlando, both would like to hear from the field clinician so that we can address them. So there are no plans to change the tablets for home care home base but if there are problems that you want to escalate please go ahead and do so.
Q. Cintas told me twice this last month that they’re working with VNSNY management to fix a glitch in the system not allowing refresh, not showing we have any allotment on our shirts. This is about uniform ordering.
A. Marian Haas: I will make sure that we find out what’s happening and get back to this individual and anyone else impacted by it. Thank you.
HR Policies / Pay and PTO Policies
Q. Can HR provide the 2021 medical benefit chart that outlines the options available? It is helpful to compare the two PPO options. And there‘s currently nothing on HR Connect about 2021 benefits. There‘s still a chart posted with 2018 benefit information. A chart like this never seems to be available prior to the election period.
A. Marian Haas, SVP of Human Resources. Thanks for the question. The benefits chart that you displayed here is found on HR Connect and will be updated for 2021. Meanwhile there are many materials that are available as well as workshops and helpful information through our open enrollment resources, including Health Advocate, our advocacy service for our health benefits and the administrator of the new plan that we‘re offering, the HSA PPO plan. So there are many details to go through and many helpful resources. I will follow–up with this person individually as well as make sure that access to the chart that you’re referencing here is available.
I apologize about the chart, the 2018 benefits chart that you’re saying is still posted. We do often find that people discover outdated information on our Internet because we don’t take down history from our SharePoint site. But alerting us to the fact that it’s up there and it was found is helpful. Sometimes there are links that have not been disabled and that results in finding old information.
Q. An email went out a couple of weeks ago stating that we can request monitors and headsets while we continue to work from home. I bought my own monitor during the summer. Has there been any discussion about reimbursing those people who already bought their own monitors?
A. We’ve actually heard from a number of staff who, because they’re working from home, they’re not spending money on commuting, and many people have went and bought their own monitor and are going to then keep the monitor as their own personal monitor.
The monitors that we are making available are a standard monitor and we‘re not able to use any other types of monitors. We don’t want to have multiple different types of monitors through the organization.
So if you already bought a monitor it’s yours to keep. Managers need to sign off on any requests for monitors or headsets as well for staff working from home. But we‘re not able to reimburse staff who purchase their own monitor.
Q. I hope this email finds you in good health and spirits. I was just wondering what happened to all of the thousands of hours of donated PTO? Where did it go and what was the result? There was a great deal of unused time as everyone has returned from furlough.
A. Marian Haas: The PTO donation fund is still intact. We have not spent all of the hours that were donated. And we are now finding that there is need for those donated hours from many of our staff who are either going out on quarantine or for various reasons, either they have symptoms, or they have been exposed to someone who is positive.
Typically, the New York State sick time benefits had covered time off that was a result of being quarantined for these reasons. But there‘s a maximum benefit of ten days for that and we have found that people have been out multiple times.
So we just identified a number of individuals in this situation and we are working with the PTO Donation Fund Committee to provide them with donated PTO time. It’s unfortunate that this second wave is now happening, and it seems like there will be a need for the funds that remain in the PTO donation fund. But it is still being used for the purpose that it was initially set up for people who have absences due to COVID that are not covered otherwise.
Employee Health and Safety
Q. Will field workers be able to get a vaccine for COVID through VNSNY when it is available? If so, any chance that there is a tentative timetable on when it may possibly be made available?
A. So there is no timetable yet because I don’t believe those decisions have been made. We’ve had calls with the state health department and with the city health department and they are still prioritizing who will get access and how the distribution will occur.
Depending on the type of vaccine there are different requirements. The Pfizer vaccine requires a certain temperature control and reconstitution. The Moderna vaccine is a different type. So we are hopeful that we will have a significant role in vaccinating the community and making vaccines available for our employees, but we do not have anything definitive on that yet.
Q. The test that VNSNY performs on employees is it a rapid test. I mean how long does it take to get the results? What app on the phone is needed?
Tony Dawson:So the test that we perform is a rapid test. It’s called BinaxNOW. It’s from the Abbott company. And the app that you is the Navica App. It is available to all iPhone users on your work phone. You need to input some to the app. And when you come for the test we‘re able to then download your test results directly onto your phone so you can show that you have test results, and those test results are good for a week. So again it’s called a BinaxNOW test. It’s a rapid test. It takes all of 15 minutes to get the results back.