FAQ #43: December 10, 2020 – Containing Answers from December 8th
Answers to Staff Questions on Employee Health and Safety, Supplies and PPE, 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, December 8th.
Employee Health and Safety
Q. I’m afraid that I will be forced to take the COVID vaccine in order to work. And I’m not comfortable in taking the vaccine because of potential side effects.
A. I want to assure you that there is no intention to force anyone to take a vaccine. The vaccine is being made available on a voluntary basis. And it’s only if the government makes a change to that at some later point that we would have to enforce differently. But at this point it is entirely voluntary to take the vaccine. Of course, getting the vaccine helps provide you with protection. So please have an open mind when you consider it.
Q. Can we get the results of who will take the COVID-19 vaccine and who will not take it and what are the consequences of not taking the COVID vaccine?
A. I’m going to turn over to Andria in a moment, but as I explained the vaccine is not mandatory. It will be offered, as Andria described, on a voluntary basis. The consequences of not taking the vaccine are you won’t have the protection that the vaccine will provide to you. Andria, would you like to talk a little bit about the initial planning that we have on how we plan to offer vaccine?
Andria Castellanos, Chief of Provider Services: So as Marki said, we’ve been informed by the Bureau of Immunization of the City of New York that our organization has been prioritized to receive vaccine. We anticipate receiving vaccine sometime in the next, I would say, three to six weeks. We do not know exactly when we will receive vaccine and we do not know how much vaccine we will receive.
You are probably all reading about this in the newspapers that health care workers, frontline workers, are going to be prioritized for receiving vaccine. We will prioritize our field staff for vaccine receipt, and we will also do some delineation to determine and communicate with people who are the most at-risk workers or field staff. We have not finalized that yet. All of our field staff will be part of that I’m going to call it calculus, sort of, of who is at the greatest risk and then how we are going to prioritize.
We do expect that in January we will receive more and more vaccine. So if you are not on the first list of priority use, we do expect relatively quickly that sometime in January, maybe February, that we will have enough vaccine for any of our staff, field staff, I’m going to specify, field staff who want vaccine.
We have teams of people who are really working now full-time figuring out how we’re going to notify people, how we’re going to schedule people, where we’re going to do the vaccine administration, how we’re going to staff the vaccine administration site and how we’re going to follow all of the regulatory requirements associated with this as well as how we’re going to inform all of us on vaccine safety and vaccine information.
So one of the first things that we’re doing, and you’ll all hear about this, is every week we’re going to have a special vaccine call with our clinical experts to answer your questions and to give you information.
In addition soon you will see a banner on our intranet for Vaccinate VNSNY. And that is the place where we will put important and pertinent information about vaccine administration.
So a lot of details to come, a lot of information which we will share with you. We are very excited that we’ve been prioritized in the city to do this. And we are going to do this as quickly as we can so that we can get as many of our staff vaccinated as desired. So we are waiting for
Regarding the survey, it was just closed out. We got the preliminary results, which we’re still analyzing. But basically, staff responses vary by line of business with about 50% of staff indicating that they would be interested in getting the vaccine and about 50% saying that they would not.
In hospice, it was a higher number, about 60% of hospice staff indicated that they were interested in getting the vaccine. So we are pulling that detail together and we will be sharing it with staff. But that’s hot off the press.
Q. Will New York State share the survey information with New York Immunization Bureau?
A. Our survey results are similar to what New York City has found in their immunization survey. I was on a call with the new Commissioner, Dave Chokshi, of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Friday morning. And they shared that the response to their vaccine survey shows about 50% are interested in getting the vaccine.
Q. When will we be getting the vaccine?
A. We are waiting for Moderna to get final approval, which looks like it’s December 17 is what I saw in the newspapers today. And then they would start to provide it thereafter. So we do not have a definitive date yet by which we will be getting the vaccine. But we are doing planning at this time, assuming we will be getting it within the next number of weeks.
Patient Care and Clinical
Q. Nurses are not being informed 24 hours prior to a positive COVID-19 admission. Please have management and the weekend room adhere to this requirement.
A. Andria Castellanos: We’ll communicate this to the team to see how we can improve the process. And I’ll ask the team to get back to this person directly to see if we can find the root cause of this issue. Obviously we’re very concerned about communicating this information accurately, correctly and timely. It’s quite important.
Q. For COVID-19 testing at home for homebound/bedbound patients, what is the procedure?
A. So we do not provide COVID-19 testing for our patients. We do not have the ability to provide that testing for patients. So it would need to be provided by a physician or practitioner that they are interacting with. And physicians may have services that they can arrange to have someone get an in-home test. But we are not able to provide that testing. The testing that we provide, which is the rapid COVID test onsite here, is for testing our employees.
Q. Any plans to vaccinate patients who want it?
A. So we’ll be getting the vaccine to vaccinate our employees. However, there has been discussion about potentially vaccinating patients and members in the community. That’s probably a little bit further down the road, and we’ll communicate as we learn more.
Supplies, Masks and PPE
Q. When will the Manhattan nurses receive the four wheels, VNSNY bag? Nurses have to travel to the office, pick up the COVID-19 PPE, take a bus/train/bus and then carry bulky COVID PPE because the COVID patients have to be visited last to avoid cross-contamination.
A. Andria Castellanos: We will also have to follow-up on that. I don’t know if anyone on the line has any information about that question. But it’s one to follow-up on. So thank you for giving us that information.
Follow up after the call with Sal Bastardi: We explored the option of 4-wheel bags. This would have meant the nurses had to carry two bags. We decided instead to condense the covid kits so they are easier to carry throughout the day, rather than have field staff carry two bags.
HR Policies / Pay and PTO Policies
Q. I am a home health aide. I notice that the December 8 COVID assessment was sent differently. And I must sign an agreement to get the assessment and all other modifications from the agency and also expect to pay a standard rate. We’re all low-income earners and already struggling to keep a roof over our head and food on the table. Why this additional burden?
A. I’m assuming this has to do with the COVID assessment information that’s sent via the send data app that the home health aides are working with. Andria, are you familiar with a change that was made to that?
Andria Castellanos: No, I’m not familiar with a change. But I will forward this to the leadership team at Partners in Care. They can communicate with this person as well as if it’s a global issue with all the home health aides. I’m not really clear about the question entirely. So we will get some clarification on this. Thank you.
Q. I am a home health aide. I have not had in-service this year and the year is almost ended. What should I do?
A. Andria Castellanos: Because of the national emergency, the state has pushed forward the deadline for annual in-service requirements. If you don’t have your annual in-service in the year that you need to take it, they’ve given us extra time. We are not completely clear when that extra time is going to be up. But we are preparing to administer an in-service that is online. And I want to see if Tony has anything additional that he wants to add to what I’m saying, but we will communicate clearly to the aides as soon as we have that online platform available.
Tony, do you have anything you want to add to that?
Tony Dawson, VP of Quality and Customer Experience: We are working on a process to be able to do some of that education online. So as we get that more wrapped up, we’ll let you know ahead of time. But Andrea’s correct, we do not have to comply with that requirement at least for now during the pandemic. So we’ll let you know as soon as we have more information on the in-services moving forward.
Q. I did not receive an email regarding today’s call.
A. So I’m sorry that you did not get an email, but I guess you got on the call anyway. So I’m glad that you’re here. But the call notice goes out to exchange users, which is every employee, so I’m surprised that you didn’t get it, but it goes to everyone.
Q. There is a new process for signing in guests with building security. I figured this out when I was trying to sign someone in, and the SL Green Web site was no longer working.
A. There is a new system, and we are working with building management to get that set up for staff at 220. Once we have the information we will provide that to you.