FAQ #45: December 28, 2020 – Containing Answers from December 22nd
Answers to Staff Questions on Employee Health and Safety, Patient Care and Clinical Questions, 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 22nd.
Employee Health and Safety
Q. Is everyone free to take the COVID-19 vaccine?
A. We are planning to make the vaccine available once we receive it in a prioritization order. We’re going to start with those staff who are working in assisted living facilities and in nursing homes on our behalf. And from there, we will continue the prioritization. We’re going to start with our direct care staff, not with all staff, because we will have a limited supply of the vaccine coming to us.
Andria Castellanos, Chief of Provider Services: We have about 9,000 field staff. That’s a lot of field staff. So, we ask for everybody’s patience as we work our way through this. As Marki said, the vaccine supply will initially be limited. And so, that requires us to prioritize in a way that makes sense, according to government and city direction.
Q. If you are positive for COVID antibodies, do you need to get vaccinated?
A. Andria Castellanos: If you have positive antibodies, the recommendation is that you should get the vaccine.
Tony Dawson, VP of Quality and Customer Experience: Yes, you have it right. You should take the vaccine at this point.
Q. Managers receive the spreadsheet with the list of employees who should be receiving COVID vaccine based on field work. I supervise 10 field workers but only got a list of two people. I followed up with the contact person but wanted to alert you of the mistake in the spreadsheet.
A. Thank you for sharing this. For all of our managers who are on the call, you should be looking at your list carefully. There may be people on your list who are not field workers, and/or you might have some staff missing. If this is the case, you should let the appropriate contact person know, so that when we are ready to start scheduling vaccines, we are able to do so for the people who are in our priority order.
Q. Can staff decline receiving the vaccine?
A. Staff can decline receiving the vaccine. The vaccine, when it’s offered to you, is voluntary. So if you are contacted to receive the vaccine and you do not want to receive it, you can decline. But understand that we’ve got 9,000 field staff and 13,000 employees, and we’re going to continue to work our way through the list. If you decline, you’re going to go to the bottom of the list. We will eventually get back to you, but it can’t be that you call back a week later and say, “Now I would like my vaccine.” This is going to be a huge undertaking for us to be able to get everyone scheduled and vaccinated accordingly.
Q. Please clarify whether aides who work at nursing homes and are required to undergo weekly testing for COVID-19, will continue to be required to undergo weekly testing for COVID post vaccination.
A. There’s no information about that yet. If you’ve been watching the news, you can see that the nursing home patients and staff are being prioritized for the vaccine. The governor of the State of New York made the COVID testing a requirement, and he is the one who will have an executive order to stop that. We’ll keep you posted, but we still have no information about the weekly testing requirements post vaccination.
Q. I am a subject of the AstraZeneca vaccine trial being conducted at Columbia Presbyterian. I have received both study injections, but it’s a double-blind randomized trial so I don’t know if I received the vaccine or the placebo. They will unblind me if another vaccine becomes available to me. Has any thought been given to how someone like me might demonstrate to the study that a vaccine is available to me? I have a hunch that I’m already vaccinated, so it’s quite possible that once I’m unblinded, my dose could go to someone else.
A. Since this is a very specific question, we will follow up directly with this person. Thank you for reaching out to us. I share this because I wanted to share two things. First, if anyone else has been a member of a study, even though you may not know if you received a vaccine or the placebo, we would love to hear from you, because we’d love to hear more information. So if you have been part of a study, please let us know. And second, in the case of this individual, we will follow up with you directly to talk about how you might be able to help us and what our vaccine administration protocol is in terms of prioritization.
Q. Are telehealth visits going to be utilized going forward as we get more and more COVID positive cases?
A. We have been using telehealth in some of the areas of our business. As you may remember from our discussions in the spring, we were using telehealth to keep our staff safe, especially when we did not have PPE for our staff. We now have more than adequate PPE, so we are expecting our staff to make in-home visits. When we provide telehealth visits, especially for our CHHA, we do not get those visits counting towards our LUPA threshold. And there is a significant financial impact for the organization when we are. So basically, we’re not paid for our services.
Patient Care and Clinical
Q. The parking permit will expire on 12/31/2020. Any news on the status for 2021?
A. We received news on December 22nd that the parking permits were extended to June 30, 2021! Please note that as of now, NYC DOT is not planning on issuing new permits with the new date, and instead instructs us to use the permits that were originally issued. The permit must be completely filled out to be valid. Additional information will be provided on the December 29th COVID-19 CEO Conference Call.
Note: Your permit is to be used for medical employment purposes only. It may be displayed only in the vehicle listed on the permit.
Supplies, Masks and PPE
Q. Please clarify what the mask requirement will be after taking the COVID-19 vaccine?
A. Andria Castellanos: The recommendation is that everyone continues to wear a mask. And my understanding on the reason for this is that it’s not entirely clear whether just because you get the vaccine and you don’t have any symptoms, that you are not capable of transmitting COVID to somebody else. And so, even though you’re not sick, you may — I say may, because we don’t have enough of the science or data yet — you may still be able to transmit it. And that’s why you have to continue to wear a mask. Anything to add Tony?
Tony Dawson: You have it exactly right. That’s what the CDC and the FDA are recommending right now. And if that changes, we’ll let you know, but for the foreseeable future, you will continue to wear a face mask until more of the population is vaccinated.
Marki Flannery: My understanding is that we need to get to herd immunity, which I believe is 75% of the population, before we can even consider stopping mask usage. Is that correct?
Andria Castellanos: Yes, that is what we’re hearing from the public health officials at this point.
HR Policies / Pay and PTO Policies
Q. If a clinician is on vacation over the holidays, will VNSNY be calling their personal phones to set up an appointment, or should we have our work phones with us? As you can tell, I am very anxious to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
A. Andria Castellanos: If you’re an employee who gets your time in Workday, our database has both your work phone and your personal phone, to the extent that you’ve communicated and updated your phone number in Workday. The home health aides don’t use Workday. It’s very, very important that you make sure that you have updated your phone number information in Workday. That is the database we will be using. We will likely try your work phone first, and then we will try your personal phone second. I encourage everybody to go onto Workday and update your phone numbers. If you’re a home health aide, and you think that we don’t have your correct phone number, call your supervisor and ask them to update your phone number in the data system. It’s very important that we have accurate information for you.
Q. Nurses need to communicate with Employee Health and stay on top of VNSNY communications while they are out, if they are able to health-wise. The benefits department sends emails to nurses who are out, but some nurses are reporting they don’t have email access. How should nurses who are out make sure they can continue to send and receive VNSNY communications if needed?
A. Marian Haas, SVP of Human Resources: A nurse or any employee’s access to email while out on leave of absence is not turned off. That practice was changed a number of months ago. If you are on a leave of absence, you should still be able to access your email. If you can’t, you should contact the help desk for assistance on that. And yes, we do use email to communicate important information to you. That was one of the reasons we changed that practice of turning off email access.
If an employee is not out on leave, but just out for several days due to quarantine or signs and symptoms, there should be no interruption in their email access. So again, the help desk is your best route for solving that problem. If there is a specific benefits issue, please reach out through ‘Ask HR’.
Q. Your weekly CEO calls and other VNSNY communications have been very helpful and informative, serving to keep the lines of two-way communication, and providing staff with vital information. Will the new CEO be continuing this practice?
A. I know that Dan is a huge communicator, and Dan wants very much to continue communications with staff, and find ways that more suit his style. He’s not going to do exactly what I do, but he will be doing a number of different types of communication. And I’m sure you will be very pleased with the way that Dan communicates. I have not asked him if he’s going to do a weekly conference call, but that’s something that I will follow up with him on to find out.