Service Standard #8: Workplace Safety

• Think safety first. Each employee is responsible for assessing and maintaining a safe work environment for staff and patients.
• Be aware of all safety procedures, and report unsafe situations to your manager immediately.

Huddle Topic Suggestions: 

• Complete the Safety Culture Survey (see below)!!!

Atrius Health has engaged Safe and Reliable Healthcare to conduct our second Safety Culture Survey. The aim of this survey is to understand how you feel about the Safety, Communication, Operational Reliability, and Engagement (SCORE) factors where you work. Your input is extremely important and valuable and will help us understand how to improve the conditions in which you work and the safety and reliability of the care delivered to patients.   

 

The survey will run from 4/11/16 to 5/9/16. Reminders and up to date response rates will be included in the Connecter each week during this period. The overall response rate for the VNA during the last Safety Culture Survey (2013) was approximately 20%...we can do better than that!!  Our goal is to get to an 85% response rate for this survey cycle!

 

Atrius Health is completely committed to ensuring the confidentiality and anonymity of your response to this survey.  To ensure this, departments with fewer than 8 responses will have their results included in another department reported results.

 

Please visit https://surveys.safeandreliablecare.com/s/score-atrius/ to take the survey. Select the office that you are assigned to and then the department you associate yourself with.

 

If you have any questions about the survey process do not hesitate to contact Atrius Health Patient Safety & Risk Management at (617) 559-8195 or SafetyCultureSurvey@AtriushHealth.org.

Most people remember that April 15 is "Tax Day". Many people do NOT know that the day following day is National Healthcare Decisions Day!!! They are paired because, as Benjamin Franklin reportedly said "there are only two unavoidable things in life: death and taxes"

 

As one of the largest employers of healthcare workers in the state, it would be great if we could say our employees are ALL knowledgeable about Advanced Care Planning AND had started the conversations themselves with their families and their doctors outlining what is important to them at the end of life, and what kind of care they would wish for, maybe even have put something in writing.  As providers who daily go into the homes of our patients, we should be knowledgeable about Advanced Care Planning, Advanced Directives, Health Care Proxy designation so that we can encourage our patients to have conversations that will only help them, their families and their health care providers!

 

National Healthcare Decisions Day has a website with some short and informative videos. There are many other websites about having those Planning Conversations, for example The Conversation Project, 5 Wishes, Compassion and Choices, etc. I know I speak for many on the Hospice team when I ask that we all truly give this topic some thought as NHDD approaches and use that as a target date for having a conversation!!

Click the FULL ARTICLE button for complete information.

• Galina Brusilovsky, PT
• Stephen Cannon, PT
• Christine Ciolfi, PT
• Lisa Clotar, RN
• Debra Collins, RN
• Patricia Daniels, LPN
• Marie Davis, PT
• Beverly Dewitt, RN
• Roberta Dillon, RN
• Joanne Folan, RN
• Susan Gauthier, OTR
• Valerie Green, RN
• Paulette Hallihan, RN
• Steven Johnson, OT
• Rebecca Lewis, PT
• Christine Lorkiewicz, OT
• Melisa Mantha, RN
• Kristopher McGravey, PTA
• Lisa McNeil, RN
• Chaplain Chloe Meadows
• Michelle Morfiris, LPN
• Theresa Niven, RN
• Kelly O'Malley, RN
• Amber Pombo, CCC-SLP
• Gail Prisby, RN
• Deidre Shea, PT
• Susan Spencer, PT
• Deborah Strzetelski, PT
• Michelle Tedoldi, RN
• Rose Monahan Hospice Home Staff
• VNA Care Hospice Staff
• VNA Care Network & Hospice Staff
• VNA of Boston Staff

For Encore issues including communications, Encore laptops, WebVPN and general technology

• Through Friday, April 15, 11:59 PM - Sean Carroll (508) 868-0615
• Beginning Saturday, April 16, 12:00 AM - John Severin (781) 775-7982

For McKesson issues including iPads and laptops and general technology (support is provided weekdays 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, weekends and holidays 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM)

• Through Tuesday, April 12, 10:00 PM - Cathy Langone (617) 913-3003
• Beginning Wednesday, April 13, 6:00 PM - Jose' Parra (617) 913-3003

 

 

The agency continues to prepare for CMS regulations related to Value Based Purchasing. The information that will be transmitted to CMS is pulled from our OASIS information and from our Patient Satisfaction Survey data.

 

For our STAR ratings, VNACN 3.5 and VNAB 4.5, we have reviewed the information and are currently working on plans for improvement to gain some ground for VNACN and bring our STAR score back up to 4.0 or greater.....certainly a moving target....but we are making great strides.

 

It has been evaluated the our answer to the flu question on OA has not been answered in full for the flu season that occurs between the dates of October 1 and March 31. Please make a mental note that if your patient is under our care during those dates it is imperative that you ask the patient if they had a flu vaccine and document the response. Please remember to answer yes to the OA question that asks if the episode is dated in the flu season, October 1 through March 31. This is a must read and mandatory to improve our outcomes.

 

In concert with the items for flu and pneumonia, we are working with our EMR vendors to capture the Herpes vaccine data. There will be education in the next few weeks around the entry of this into the EMR to prepare for CMS data collection.

 

Thank you for your attention and recognition of the importance of capturing this data accurately and timely.

 

 

By the Quality & Education Departments

The Quality and Education teams have rolled out the new and highly patient-friendly education workbook. Please make sure that when you are doing your admission visits you are using this tool to educate your patients and keep them up to date on useful information to improve their quality of life.

In the very near future we will be introducing an updated certified home care patient handbook. This new handbook will take the place of the VNAB handbook and VNACN admission folder and includes all necessary information to review with patients upon admission. This is a product that, when coupled with the patient education workbook, will be a wealth of information for patient-use and collaboration of educational activity between clinical staff.

 

The disease from the Zika virus is mild. In fact 80% of people do not know they have been exposed. The symptoms are rash, fever, joint pain and a non-purulent conjunctivitis. Once exposed, illness occurs 3 to 12 days after.  Lab testing was restricted to the CDC but has been expanded to a number of State Health Departments including Massachusetts. One test is a PCR test on urine and semen and it must be done within 7 days of becoming ill with the virus. The other is a serology IgM test that can detect the virus by the end of the 4th to 12 week after becoming infected. A positive test could be related to Zika or cousin virus exposure like Dengue. 

 

The most serious consequences of the virus are to unborn children so there is new guidance for pregnant woman which physicians are following. The Massachusetts web site has a Zika Blog in different languages entitled Zika Virus and Travel: Advice for Women discussing pregnancy related risks for travel. As with all persons, avoidance of mosquito bites is the best preventive action using DEET all day long and permethrin treated clothing. DEET in the concentration prescribed is safe for pregnancy and lactation.  At present there is no treatment or vaccine. Vaccine development is being accelerated by work with other related virus like Dengue.

 

Complete codes are listed in the F1 Help in Referral - Clinical. Use one of the codes in this field OR one of the codes already entered in the chart in the HHRG/Dx tab. These are all complete codes. Click the FULL ARTICLE button for more information.