Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our communities have looked to you – our incredible people – for advice, reassurance and support. Time and again our communities have stated that health care workers are their most trusted source for accurate information when it comes to health decisions. In addition, we know it is vital to equip you with the latest information so you can confidently make a decision about receiving the vaccine for yourself and your family.

As a reminder, all Centura associates are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at a Centura Health facility at no charge, as long as supply is available. If you have not yet received a vaccine and would like to, please know that each associate’s personalized invitation does not expire. Details regarding how to schedule an appointment were emailed to each associate with the subject line ACTION REQUIRED: Invitation to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and that invitation remains active indefinitely. We will continue to administer vaccines as supply is available, and we are committed to vaccinating every associate and provider who would like to receive the vaccine.

We are dedicated to providing you with the latest information to enable you to answer the most common concerns and questions surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines. This week we tackle the following:

Can I get sick from the vaccine or give someone else the virus because of my vaccine?

Both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNtech vaccines use a relatively new technology to fight the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes the technology as follows:

mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious disease. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead they teach our cells how to make a protein – or even just a piece of a protein – that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies. Therefore, you can’t get COVID-19 from the vaccines.

What are the side effects?

Most people do not have serious side effects after being vaccinated, though some mild side effects can be expected.

The most common side effects for the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine included fatigue (3.8%) and headaches (2.0%). There was no severe adverse events and older adults showed fewer side effects.

The most common side effects of the Moderna vaccine were injection site pain (2.7%), fatigue (9.7%), muscle pain or soreness (8.9%), joint pain (5.2%), and headache (4.5%). Moderna also reported no severe adverse events.

If you have allergies, especially severe ones that require you to carry an EpiPen, you should discuss the COVID-19 vaccine with your doctor, who can assess your risk and provide more information on if and how you can get vaccinated safely. The CDC also recommends that if you had an allergic reaction after the first dose you should not receive the second injection.

Questions?
If you have clinical questions about vaccines, please contact your primary care provider. A wealth of vaccine information is also available on our COVID-19 intranet site and at Centura.org/vaccine. For other questions, you may reach out to your local incident command.

Beginning Wednesday, March 3, associates will no longer need to complete health and temperature screenings when arriving at either the Mineral Circle or Havana locations.

Although we are no longer requiring the health and temperature screenings, it is important to continue to wear your mask, practice social distancing, and wash your hands frequently.

Instead of screening upon arrival, you are asked to self-monitor for symptoms (headache, fever or chills, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, new loss of taste or smell, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea) and exposure risk (close contact, high-risk exposure with a known lab-confirmed positive person, or public health has required you to be tested). If you are sick or have been exposed to an individual with COVID-19, please do not come to work and call the Occupational Health COVID-19 Call Center at 303.673.7025, option 1. If you travel to a licensed health care entity, you will still be asked to complete a health and temperature screening.

The health and safety of our 21,000 caregivers is our top priority, please help keep each other healthy by diligently self-monitoring for COVID-19 symptoms and exposure.

The past year has been challenging during the pandemic, but it has invited connection and deepened relationships, as we have worked to support each other and provided hope to our communities.  Learning about your unique experience and engagement is crucial, and we invite you to share your story with us in Centura Health’s Associate and Physician Engagement surveys beginning Wednesday, Mar. 17.

Designed to measure key drivers of workplace engagement, these surveys are an opportunity for you to share your unique experiences working at Centura. Your participation ensures we obtain valuable feedback from you, as we work to achieve Centura Health’s 2025 aspirations.

The confidential surveys run through March 31 and may only be taken online. Check your Centura Health email inbox the morning of March 17 for a message from our survey partner, Glint (survey@glintinc.com), that will provide a link to the survey and access instructions. The full associate survey takes approximately 15 minutes to complete, and the survey questions will cover important engagement topics about your unique experiences.

We are committed to building a culture where you can live your mission, grow in your purpose and encounter meaningful and exciting experiences. Your engagement is our priority! Thank you in advance for taking time to complete the survey and sharing your important feedback with us.

Questions?
Please contact your human resources leader or email engagement@centura.org.

Navigating today’s digital landscape can be very complex as cyber threats like malware, phishing, data breaches and unsecure wi-fi connections continue to pose threats. Now, more than ever, it’s important to protect your identity and online privacy, as well as your family’s.

As the security and well-being of our people is our priority, Centura is pleased to offer a new opportunity for you to enroll in a LifeLock identity theft program to protect your identity and electronic devices. Payment for this benefit program is convenient through payroll deduction!

Enrollment is now open! Click here to review the special benefit plans and pricing LifeLock is offering Centura caregivers. To enroll, contact the People Resource Center at 888-622-1111, option 1, or you can submit a general HR Self-Service Hub ticket.

Don’t get caught off guard! Prepare for our new SharePoint and Microsoft Teams expiration policy that will be implemented in April 2021.

Why is this being done?
Currently Centura does not have an expiration policy for Microsoft Online SharePoint Sites or Microsoft Teams Sites.* As a result, many document repositories exist that are no longer being used, taking up storage and adding risk of sensitive information being unnecessarily discoverable.  

Information Technology (IT) has partnered with Corporate Responsibility to identify an expiration policy for Microsoft SharePoint Online and Teams sites that will go into effect on April 30, 2021.  

*If you are not familiar with Microsoft Teams, it is a communication and collaboration tool with document storage and sharing capabilities, provided by SharePoint. It will also replace Skype for Business instant messaging. It was piloted in IT and will be rolled out to the rest of the organization throughout March and April. Please stay tuned for additional communication and training. If you would like to get a head start, review the MS Teams End User Guide.

What is in the new expiration policy?
After April 30, 2021, all SharePoint Sites and Microsoft Teams sites will need to be “renewed” on an annual basis. The “clock” for annual renewal will “start” on April 30, so the first potential expiration date would be April 29, 2022.
There are two mechanisms for annual renewal:

1. Manual renewal
   • At 30 days, 14 days and 7 days before expiration, ALL site owners will receive an email notification alerting them of the pending expiration. The email contains a link to manually extend the group lifetime by 1 year.
   • On the expiration date, site owners will receive a final email alerting them that the group has expired but is still recoverable for 30 days. The email contains a link to manually extend the site lifetime by 1 year.
2. Automatic renewal based on activity
   • During the 35 days prior to expiration, any activity on the site’s contents (mailbox, documents, or the site itself) will trigger an automatic renewal of the site. This will push out the expiration date of the group to 1 year from this activity date.

• If you are a site owner, regularly checking your Centura email for expiration notifications for your site and responding to the site renewal requests in a timely manner.
• If you own or regularly use a site, ensure that there are at least two owners listed.

Data Security is excited to release another fun video in its monthly video campaign! Watch your emails on Wednesday, March 3, as the campaign kicks off with the second video in the series titled “Go Grande.”  

You are encouraged to watch the entertaining videos and then correctly answer the questions at the end of each video. Prior to watching the video, you will be asked a series of questions related to how you feel about security.

This fun campaign featuring security bad guy, Human Error, will take place the first Wednesday of every month.

Please participate in this fun campaign to support our efforts to protect and secure Centura Health’s patient data and network infrastructure.

On Sunday, March 14, Daylight Savings Time begins and the clocks will move forward one hour, resulting in a missed 2:00 a.m. (02:00) hour. For all Centura Health hospitals and clinics this will impact activities that are dependent upon a timing sequence (e.g. patient transfers, hourly medications, and flowsheet documentation). Please refer to the instructions below for specific direction regarding how to handle this missed hour within Epic. The “DST period” will be the gap between 1:59 a.m. (01:59) and 3:00 a.m. (03:00), representing the skipped or non-existent hour that should have occurred between those times.

Tip sheets are also available via the Learning Home Dashboards that provide further step-by-step instruction.

Medications
The system automatically reschedules medication due times to accommodate the non-existent 02:00 hour. Pharmacists and clinicians will see a warning when putting in medication orders that cross the DST period, prompting for confirmation.

Flowsheets
Volumes for infusions will appear inaccurate as they will not account for a non-existent 02:00 hour. Graph data will also show the non-existent 02:00 hour, even though it never occurred. When documenting such items, add a comment indicating “daylight savings time”.

Lab
For Lab POC and WellSky, the time change will be automated. For Lab middleware system, the time change will be managed by Lab IT.

GE MacLab Cupid and IR
Your hemodynamic system will adjust to the new time resulting in a one-hour gap in the documentation. To account for the difference in time, add the Daylight Savings Time SmartText to your procedure log as a miscellaneous event.

Surgery/OpTime
It is important for case tracking events to reflect the actual amount of time between events. Please change the case tracking event times so that the amount of time between events is accurate rather than the actual times. Add a nursing note that includes the actual times for that patient, even if it looks incorrect because of the time change. Example: A trauma patient enters the OR at 01:40. Then, as 01:59 passes it becomes 03:00. The case ends at 03:20. The case tracking event should reflect “In Room” at 01:40. and “Out of Room” at 02:20. This will correct the time in the room to 40 minutes (instead of 100 minutes). The nurse will write a note explaining the alteration in times.

Anesthesia
Anesthesia cannot be documented in the system during the DST period. All documentation must take place on paper so that it can be scanned back into the system later by HIM.

OB/Stork
Time calculations will not be accurate during the DST period. This includes hours of life of newborn, labor length, time since ROM, time since cervical exam, and labor and delivery events. Clinicians must manually calculate times and document the sequence of events in a note electronically. Please work with your biomed department to change the times on the fetal monitors as you normally would.

Device Integration and Alaris Pumps
Device integration will not be taken offline for our Spring DST period. See specific time stamp instructions in your Application specific tip sheets on the Learning Home Dashboards.

ED/ASAP
During the Spring DST, the system displays emergency room patients in the department for one hour more than the reality. Note that patient tracking times and event-to-event times will not consider the skipped 02:00 hour.

Worklist Tasks
Tasks scheduled between the 02:00 and 03:00 hour will display as “overdue”. Document these tasks at the appropriate time during the 03:00 hour.

Bed Charges
An additional bed charge is added to an account if the patient spans the DST period. Starting in Epic version 2018, the system automatically calculates most hourly bed charges during DST events. Manual charge correction is still necessary for timed procedures and/or when a patient event occurs such as admission/discharge within the DST period. For example, manual correction is necessary for a patient admitted at 01:30 and discharged at 01:00 due to the DST transition.

Questions?
Contact the Help Desk at ext. 84000 or (303) 643-4200.