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| © 2021 Centura Health. All Rights Reserved. Proprietary and Confidential - for internal distribution only. |
Safety First, People Always is at the forefront of everything we do as we strive to deliver health care that is compassionate, top-quality and safety-focused. One of the many ways we measure our commitment to safety and high-performing whole person care is through the Leapfrog Group Hospital Safety Grades.
The Leapfrog Group is an independent national watchdog organization driven by employers and other purchasers of health care committed to improving health care quality and safety for consumers and purchasers. The Safety Grade assigns an A through F grade to all general hospitals across the country based on their performance in preventing medical errors, injuries, accidents, infections and other harm to patients in their care.
We are pleased to announce the eight hospitals that received an A rating:
The Joint Commission’s surveys are a vital part of maintaining our hospitals’ accreditation as a health care provider – and your participation, expertise and dedication to delivering safe, high-quality care are crucial to our success.
To help ensure you are prepared, we are offering The Joint Commission’s Breakfast Briefings – a series of webinars designed to equip you with the information you need for a successful survey.
Over the next 13 weeks, subject-specific webinars will be released each week to share the latest Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH) content. Subject matter experts from The Joint Commission will teach the standards, elements of performance, expectations for the survey and any changes for the coming year. These recorded webinars provide an opportunity to learn directly from Surveyors, the Standards Interpretation Group (SIG) and JCR Consultants with personal experience and best practices gathered from organizations across the United States!
Watch for a new Breakfast Briefing to be released each week! To view the full lineup, visit our Regulatory Teams site and watch your entity newsletters over the coming weeks.
Participants can also earn Continuing Education Units (CEU) by participating in a Breakfast Briefing! For details about how to earn CEU, view the flyer for each webinar (available on our Regulatory Teams site).
| Nov. 15-19: Patient Safety Systems Our first webinar will focus on Patient Safety Systems. Click here for more information about how to join our first Breakfast Briefing, as well as how to earn your CEU. |
| Glint, our survey partner, no longer supports Internet Explorer. Use Google Chrome to complete your survey by tomorrow! |
More than 122 million Americans are living with diabetes (34.2 million) or prediabetes (88 million), conditions that can lead to serious health problems. There isn’t a cure yet for diabetes, but losing weight, eating healthy food, and being active can really help.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) disease that affects how your body turns food into energy. There are three main types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes (diabetes while pregnant).
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explains it, most of the food you eat is broken down into sugar (also called glucose) and released into your bloodstream. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts like a key to let the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy.
If you have diabetes, your body either doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use the insulin it makes as well as it should. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream. Over time, that can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss and kidney disease.
“We really worry about people who are not eating healthy, people who are overweight, who are not exercising or can’t build that into their lifestyle currently,” said Dr. Ozzie Grenardo, Family Physician and Centura Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer. “Those three big items get our antennae up, and those are the people at risk for diabetes. So we look at whether we can start to change some of those modifiable risk factors.”
Learn more about diabetes, including resources, via the CDC’s website, and click here to find a primary care provider within Centura.
Health disparities and risk factors
According to the CDC, the biggest risk factors include being overweight; 45 years or older; having a parent, brother or sister with Type 2 diabetes; being physically active less than three times a week, or being African American, Hispanic/Latino American, American Indian, or Alaska Native.
Dr. Grenardo says the racial and ethnic disparities are pervasive in our communities and among our patients.
“Some patients in our system, including some Black and Native American patients, have worse outcomes than whites in our system. Doctors need to know about disparities and address them; we can’t have one size fits all with patients. Equality of care has gotten us to these disparities, and we need equity in care,” he said.
There can also be geographic and socioeconomic factors that can put members of our communities at increased risk.
As Dr. Grendardo explains, “Do they have access to healthy food? Do they work in a job where they have time with themselves and their families to work out? Do they have the proper information to understand risk factors? Is it a language that is comfortable for them to understand? It’s about trying to take those factors into account.”
He says it is important for providers to figure out how to best support patients with resources and devote the necessary time as part of our mission to nurture the health of the people in our communities.
“In partnering with the community, it’s about providing information that will make an impact, and it’s about working with community leaders. If we’re doing this as a community, hopefully we’re improving as a community.”
You – our incredible people – are the heartbeat of our organization, and it is essential for you to take time off to recharge your spirit and connect with the people and activities that inspire you most. This is more important than ever for your whole health as you continue to respond to the ongoing pandemic.
As we approach the holiday season, we’d like to remind you of the holidays observed across our connected ecosystem, as detailed in our holiday pay policy:
To continue our commitment to doing business ethically and responsibly, we provide associates with an annual refresher on key principles from our code of conduct and Corporate Responsibility program. This annual Corporate Responsibility training course (Corporate Responsibility Annual Refresher Course 2021) will be available in the LEARN system later this week.
We recognize that some of our care teams are still extremely busy treating COVID patients and this course is not a top priority; however, we are making the course available for those who are able to get started. We are asking that associates complete the course by Dec. 31, 2021, but we understand that certain care teams may need additional time and we will allow for flexibility.
Key thoughts for this year’s course
To ensure Microsoft Patches are deployed less than 30 days from receipt and to maximize our data security, the Epic Production and Non-Epic Critical Application monthly maintenance windows were moved to the third Sunday of each month.
Important information regarding maintenance window activities
On Sunday, Nov. 21, Information Technology (IT) will perform monthly maintenance on Epic, resulting in planned downtimes from Sunday, Nov. 21, at 11:30 p.m. until Monday, Nov. 22, at 1 a.m. (2330 until 0100 MT, 0030 until 0200 CT), lasting approximately one and a half hours. Epic will be down and unavailable during this planned downtime.
We will also perform maintenance on the following non-Epic critical applications and services, which will be unavailable from Sunday, Nov. 21, from 11:30 p.m. until Monday, Nov. 22, at 2 a.m. (2330 until 0200 MT, 0030 until 0300 CT), lasting approximately two and a half hours. Please view the list of impacted applications or services and their related workarounds.
Non-Epic Critical Applications or devices impacted and their workaround:
| Non-Epic Critical Applications | Workaround |
| 3M 360 Encompass | There is no workaround for this application. |
| Alaris Interoperability | Use the Alaris IV Pump Integration Downtime Recovery Checklist. |
| Ascom Vital Sign Alerts (St. Francis NICU) | Ascom will not provide vital sign alerts to Cisco phones and requires the downtime procedures to be initiated. Additional staffing may be needed. |
| Flight Vector | The system is unavailable. Please initiate downtime procedures. |
| Myla Software/Virtuo Blood Culture Instruments | Culture orders will not interface from Epic to Myla during this time. Please follow downtime and manual procedures, as necessary. |
| Natus Neuroworks | Please initiate downtime procedures. |
| OBIX | OBIX will be unavailable. Downtime procedures including in-person monitoring should be initiated which may require increased staff. |
| Point of Care lab tests uploading to Epic | Point of Care (POC) lab results will not upload to Epic during the full maintenance window. POC tests completed during the downtime will upload to Epic once the downtime is complete. |
| Pyxis | Pyxis stations will automatically be placed on critical override in order to pull medications. |
| WellSky Transfusion – Blood Bank | WellSky Transfusion (Blood Bank) will not be available. The labs should initiate downtime procedures if the application is needed during the downtime. |
| Computer workstation security updates | Following the installation of workstation updates, you will see a 15-minute countdown and then the workstation will automatically restart. Offline workstations will automatically update and restart once connected to the Centura Health network. |
When this will occur
What do you need to do?
Downtime procedures should be implemented during this maintenance window. Please reference the workarounds listed in the table above.
Additional staffing or implementation of downtime procedures
The following applications may require additional staffing or implementation of downtime procedures:
Epic
We appreciate your patience as we conduct these maintenance activities, to keep our incredible people equipped with the latest tools and to ensure you can provide high quality, whole person care.
Questions?
If you have any questions regarding this maintenance window, please contact your Clinical Informaticists by Facility.
Eight Centura Health hospitals across Colorado received an “A” rating in the Fall 2021 Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, recognizing our achievements in patient safety and clinical excellence.
Your participation in The Joint Commission’s survey is a vital part of maintaining our accreditation as a health care provider. Breakfast Briefings is a series of webinars designed to equip you with the information you need for a successful survey. Click below to learn more about this webinar series and how you can earn CEU for participating, and download the flyer for our first webinar: Patient Safety Systems!
Our Associate & Physician Engagement Pulse Survey closes tomorrow. If you have not yet had a chance to share your feedback, please take five minutes to complete your survey and help build incredible experiences across our connected ecosystem.
As we approach the holiday season, we’d like to remind you of the observed holidays across our connected ecosystem for the remainder of the calendar year.
To continue our commitment to doing business ethically and responsibly, we provide an annual refresher on key principles from our code of conduct and Corporate Responsibility program. We are asking that associates complete the course by Dec. 31, 2021, but we understand that certain care teams may need additional time and will allow for flexibility.
REMINDER: The Epic Production and Non-Epic Critical Application monthly maintenance windows, which result in downtimes for associates, now occur on the third Sunday of each month. Click below to view the specific dates, times, applications impacted and workarounds, where applicable.
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