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Kaweah Health Employee Huddle

March 12, 2021

Please Note: When time does not allow us to answer every submitted question, we answer questions at the next week KD Huddle. Submit a question now for next week by e-mailing dvolosin@kaweahhealth.org.

EMPLOYEE HUDDLE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FOR 3/12/2021

If an employee has the PSP plan, do we need a referral first to see a specialist? Also, I have specialists I see at Stanford that are not available at USC. Could we get a cost breakdown sheet of how much the doctor visits and certain procedures would cost if we still choose to use Stanford?

  • No, you do not have to have a referral to see a specialist, Dermatologist, ENT, etc. We did sign a new contract with USC for higher level of care, for reduced rates and we hope we can provide that for you. Please reach out to Linda Hansen.

With the newly released CDC Guidelines about not needing to mask if vaccinated what does that look like for us here at work or hospital sponsored community events?

  • The new guideline doesn’t apply to healthcare. We do not have 100% vaccination at the hospital, or patients in it; therefore some are at risk of spreading the virus at home.

Would Kaweah Health consider providing employees with different parking permits in addition to the red ones we get? There are many employees who have to constantly leave the main campus and go to various KD campuses. Parking continues to be a struggle, and yet, there are employees who don’t have to leave the main campus and choose to park in the 3-hour parking in front of HR all day long. It’d be great if there were some parking spaces that could actually be allocated for 3-hour parking with the help of another permit.

  • I will certainly study this question and work with others to see how we might make this work. We do something similar for physician OB/GYNs and on-call specialists who have to come wheeling into the hospital and need to have a reserved parking space available to them. It won’t be a simple solution to find but we like a challenge. Stay tuned.

In order to move tiers, do we need to have both adjusted case rate and positivity rate in the appropriate Tier or can we have just one?

  • There are three metrics that you are measured against: countywide positivity rate, positivity rate for our most underserved population (Health Equity Index; bottom quartile of the County), and the number of new daily COVID cases per 100,000 population. As of Tuesday, the County reported a countywide positivity rate of 4.4%, which is the lowest since March 26, 2020. That percentage would put us in the Orange Tier. The Health Equity positivity metric is sitting below 8%, which would put us in the Red Tier. Our new daily cases per 100k are at 9.5 and we need to be at 7 or below over a 14-day period (this threshold changed today to 10 per 100k population as the State vaccinated two million people who live in the lowest health equity zip codes across the State). The State projects that Tulare County will be moved to the Red tier next Tuesday, March 16th.

Here are a few changes your HR teams had to make:

  • Virtual interviews
  • Overseeing the creation of the Day Camp for Kids
  • Processing over 1100 LOA’s
  • Processing over 900 new employees

Employees came out of retirement to help the teams 22% of our staff members contracted the virus. While we sometimes think of HR being a cut & dry area of hiring and firing – there is a human element that we don’t always think about. Your teams deal with resiliency, spiritual and mental health, employee satisfaction, employee and patient experience, just to name a few. How do you keep your teams focused and inspired when they are dealing with the human element of this organization?

  • The people in HR, Employee Health, Talent Development, Chaplaincy and Patient Experience work on behalf of our employees and patients. They are honestly personally inspired to do the best they can, knowing that that all of our employees who take care of patients or support that effort need our support and help.

You were the face of some hard decisions that the leadership made this year that affected every employee such as layoffs, no merit increases, and no 401K match. How difficult it is to keep employees inspired and loyal when you know they are disappointed with the decisions that have been made?

  • Kaweah Health is built on the core values of caring and compassion. These are long standing values. We have a great group of 5100 employees who care about our organization. It is hard to communicate information that is not going to be well received. The Executive Team talks often about the need to bring back what we have taken away, the implications, and how it effects our organization.

There was a time when the HR Department had been hit by COVID, the District LOA’s were high and the amount of employees that were being hired and processed was high. How did your team make it through that time?

  • I have high regard for Payroll, Employee Health and Human Resources. Because we were impacted in almost every department, the work kept piling up and our work effects people’s pay. A special “thank you” to Linda Hansen and Maria Hernandez who pulled teams together and a lot of our people became experts in things they hadn’t had to do before. It was challenging but everyone pulled together and pulled through.

Here are a few changes your nursing teams had to make:

  • Your teams have cared for 2,454 COVID patients.
  • Making designated COVID areas and converting spaces
  • Nurses working overtime and picking up shifts to help cover staffing
  • They endured lack of PPE and constant PPE guideline changes

Deaths. We made a decision early on to try not to focus on the deaths, but death was a huge part of this year for your teams. Our house supervisors were juggling the morgue being overrun, funeral homes being backlogged, and our staff experienced more death than ever. One changes that one of your teams submitted was that they started having to wipe down body bags with sani wipes. Another response from your teams was that they had to hide their emotions and fears to be strong for their teams.

How did you encourage your managers to help team members who were grieving at work?

  • I recognized that our leaders, especially our managers had moved into a supportive and counselor type role for their teams. They were always there with a shoulder to lean or cry on so I asked the managers to continue to do what they needed to take care of their staff and keep patients safe, otherwise we would figure out the rest of the workloads. I tried to streamline or eliminate tasks that could be taken away to give them more time for their teams. I believe it was helpful for me to be there on the units too. Helping when I could, answering questions and making sure people had information.

What kind of strain did the “No Visitor” policy have on your teams?

  • This was the hard but necessary decision. Every single patient that passed without a family member by their side will weigh heavy as a consequence of this pandemic. This was hard for the team as well because they rely on the family for more information. As we move forward we will go back to more and more visitors, but in a more controlled manner.

You made the decision to send staff in to Redwood Springs and Linwood Gardens before COVID had even reached our halls. What was that like to know that you were sending team members into a facility that was full of a virus we knew so little about?

  • I knew our team had the knowledge and we only sent staff that volunteered. The main concern at that time was PPE. We knew that if we did not send staff in Redwood Springs was going to be closed and those residents would be transferred to our hospital. I am glad we did it as it set the tone that Kaweah Health was going to take a leadership role in this County. I am very proud of our teams that went in.

All of our team members have figured out ways to adapt. They might not be able to have potlucks, but they did give fellow employees virtual baby showers. One group also started a hiking group. They did virtual recruitment fairs, and virtual interviews. Adaption and Creativity are words that can describe this year. What is a change that you hope some teams keep?

  • I hope they keep doing team activities. They have relied on each other so much this year and I want that to continue.

As the CEO you had to totally step into a new role. You were no longer just the CEO, but you became the face and the voice for the entire community. 42 Employee huddles, 37 Community Engagement webinars, virtual town halls, social media stories, press conferences, etc. Did the thought ever cross your mind that you would be the face for transparency and truth for our entire community?

  • As the CEO of any company, you do tend to be the “public face” of the organization when it comes to interviews, publications or speaking to service clubs or other groups of people. But no, I never imagined in a million years that this would be my role, day in and day out, for an entire year. That said, it has been the single most gratifying experience of my entire career as I had the opportunity to share with our community what an incredible organization Kaweah Health is and the incredible, heroic employees and providers who work here. As for speaking to truth and transparency, that’s just my DNA and I don’t know any other way.

You portrayed a real sense of calm this year, but, can you recall a moment where you panicked?

  • I do. When our COVID-positive inpatient census hit 169 this past December, at the same time as we were bursting at the seams at close to 100% occupancy in the acute medical center. It forced us to activate the Triage Command Center where we would have to begin making decisions about who got care and who didn’t. I tried to stay calm on the outside but my insides were deeply worried for our community and our employees.

Kaweah Health’s team members cared for our patients while they were juggling families and grief at home. They were dealing with children out of school and not being able to celebrate life moments such as graduations, holidays, weddings or baby showers. How did you handle your grief?

  • Okay I guess. I did become an instantaneous ordained minister and married my son Kevin to his fiancé Evy; just the six of us; not the 120-person wedding that was supposed to take place in Ojai on 10-10-20. I really found my solace in work; coming to Kaweah Health every day and immersing myself in the day-to-day discoveries of how to best respond to the virus. I learned so much and enjoyed sharing my new-found knowledge with anyone who would listen to me.

Your memory has been astonishing this year. You were able to explain to the community the differences in the BDMax, PerkinElmer, IDNow, Sofia2, and Biofire. How did you keep all of the information straight?

  • Probably the repetition of talking about it almost every day. I loved doing the research and listening to Randy Kokka and James McNulty. If you haven’t already figured out that I can be nerd at times, I would actually Google how to correctly pronounce words like Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab and Remdesivir and Dexamethasone.

Is it true that some of your leaders kept information from you because they didn’t want you telling the community too soon?

  • Yes, it’s true. Apparently you can actually be “too transparent”. They didn’t want to tell me the specific date when we would start vaccinating patients at the Urgent Care Center because they were understandably afraid that I would blab it all over town and they would be overrun with patients.