Five Questions

Good morning!

It’s the last Friday of the month, so today I will answer your questions.  Before I do that, I want to offer a couple of reminders that occur to me at this time of year.

It’s election season, and we will be going to the polls in a couple of weeks to vote for state officers, among others.  I encourage you to exercise your right and responsibility to vote, but caution you to avoid discussing politics at work, especially with patients who are under our care or with employees who are under your supervision.  It’s so easy to misconstrue intent when these topics come up that it’s best to avoid them altogether.

Along that general theme, I want to also remind you that only members of our Government Relations team and the Vice Chancellor are authorized to conduct advocacy activities with state and federal officials on behalf of UMMC.  I recognize that many of our faculty and staff are members of professional associations or other groups that have interests before the Mississippi State Legislature, the U.S. Congress or other state and federal agencies.    Please make any government official or staff member with whom you have contact aware that you are representing your group and not the Medical Center.  If you are taking part in such activities, I ask that you coordinate with my office.  Thank you.

Now, let’s get to your questions.  As a reminder, I read all of your questions and comments – about 30 per month.  I’m unable to respond to them all here, but I pass the rest on to senior administrators for their consideration.  Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns with me. 

Q:  Are there any guidelines for employees and students regarding hallway etiquette? On a daily basis as I walk through the halls I encounter groups of people walking 4-5 abreast towards me down a hallway and I'm forced to squeeze by them. Two weeks ago on a Wednesday morning as I was walking in from Garage C, there were perhaps a hundred or so students coming towards the Rowland Library. They were loud, laughing and talking, and taking up the whole walkway. I actually had to stop to let a group of seven students pass me before I could walk on to my office. And at least once every day as I walk down a hall (on the right side clutching the wall) someone coming around a corner nearly collides with me. Monday, a person literally cut the corner so closely that I thought he was going to hit me. People are so distracted; they are either on their cell phone, talking with others or just in a hurry. I'm older and I am worried that one day I'm going to be knocked down on the concrete floor and suffer some type of injury. It's bad for me as an employee, but what about our thousands of patients and visitors who come to this campus? Surely our employees, residents, physicians and students know better? But they don't act like it.

A:  I’m not aware of any current published guidelines that speak to etiquette in the hallways, near elevators, or in the use of smartphones, etc., although from time to time I have responded to comments/questions similar to yours in VC Notes.  I remember a few years ago a member of our legal team noted that we spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on worker’s compensation claims for distracted employees who are injured because they are paying more attention to their phones than to where they are walking. To me, etiquette is less about adherence to a set of rules than it is about being respectful of those around you and showing them common courtesy, just as you would want to receive yourself.  As a caring campus community, I hope we are exceptional in this regard.  On the other hand, I received three other comments like yours this month lamenting some form of public rudeness or misbehavior.  I will say that for every instance of poor etiquette that occurs, I believe there are many more instances in which our faculty, staff and students display extraordinary courtesy to others.  I’m publishing your question because I hope such positive behavior will continue to be what primarily defines our UMMC community.  

 Q:  I was wondering how many breastfeeding rooms are available on campus? I was only informed of one and it’s on the other side of campus from me. The other day in the downpour of rain I had to get out in the weather every two hours to walk to the other side of campus to pump. I am wondering why the buildings like the Annex, Translational Research Center, apartments and elsewhere do not have a breastfeeding room. Not everyone has an office in which they can do this privately so I am wondering what UMMC will do to help working mothers.

A:  There are currently three rooms dedicated to nursing mothers:

• in the Rowland Medical Library
  
  
• in Wiser 141 near the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
  
  
• in H624 of the original hospital

The library room was added in 2018 and is inside the Collaborative Learning Center.  Another location, near Meds & Threads and sponsored by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation, will open soon.  And at least one room, but probably more, will be included in the new Children’s of Mississippi expansion when it opens about a year from now.   I hope this gives you more options from which to choose for this beneficial activity.

Q:  Can you expound on why our health insurance will be increasing for 2020? And will there be an increase in pay to offset this new incremental increase?

A:  The State Employees Health Plan is administered by state government, not UMMC, so I don’t know the precise reason why the employee premium is increasing.  But costs for health care generally are going up faster than the overall inflation rate, so I expect that has a lot to do with it.  The costs of prescription drugs, in particular, have risen dramatically during the last few years.  Until last year, we had gone four years without an increase.  Employee rates for most categories have risen by 3 percent the last two years.  As far as increasing employee pay to offset the premium increase, keep in mind that UMMC already makes a substantial contribution to support health insurance for employees per the provisions of the state plan and those costs have also increased by 3 percent in each of the last two years.  More information about premiums can be found on the state Department of Finance and Administration website.

Q:  The newly launched Intranet is very cool looking but where can we log in to the Credit Union? I cannot find the link in the new format. 

A:  Thank you for pointing this out.  All the links from the previous site were evaluated as part of the transition to the new Intranet site – a huge undertaking.  Many of those links were broken, outdated or duplicated by other links.  Some, like the link to the Credit Union on our campus, were simply overlooked in the transition.  That link has been restored and can be found in the “A to Z Index” or in the “Quicklinks” under the “Administration” tab.  Like you, I am impressed with the new Intranet and the work by the web team that went into it.  But the team members would be the first to tell you that the site is a work in progress and will continue to evolve during the coming months.

Q:  It’s always difficult walking through the University Physicians Pavilion on rainy, humid days. The carpet, especially near the pharmacy, has a stale, mildew-type smell on these days. The carpet is in pretty bad shape. It is covered with stains and is definitely embarrassing. Although it is vacuumed daily, to me it gives the impression that the Pavilion is "dirty.” I doubt that the patients and their family members feel any differently. 

A:  I agree the carpet needs replacing, but before we invested in new carpet, we had to replace the leaky roof, at a cost of $600,000.  Now that the roof work has been completed, the carpet was on our list of facility improvements for this year, but the project had to be delayed in favor of more mission-critical investments.  However, the state of the carpet is such that we are circling back to pull funds from other projects we can cancel or delay.  We will be replacing the flooring as soon as possible.

Q:  Why are employees not allowed to use payroll deduction to pay their own UMMC medical bills? The other hospital I work for allows you to set it up to pay monthly installments directly from your paycheck. I feel like this could only benefit the hospital as you are ensured to get the money for the bill. I am allowed to pay as little as $50 a month on my hospital bills at my other job, and it’s auto deducted monthly; I don't even have to think about it. I feel like this would be a great service to offer employees. We do it for the $5 sale; we should be able to do it for more important things like our hospital bills.

A:  My understanding is that we looked at this a few years ago but were unable to offer payroll deduction for medical bills at that time because of the complexity of administering it with our existing payroll system.  The recent implementation of Workday has most likely enhanced our capabilities in this area, and we've actually piloted this in a couple of places, so I've asked our team to take a serious look at this benefit for our employees.  There are a lot of moving parts to this process - payroll, hospital billing, human resources, accounting - so we will need input from all quarters before committing to this initiative organization-wide.    

Thank you again for all of your comments and questions.  I hope you can see from my answers that I take them seriously.  Your engagement and your good ideas are critically important to our progress toward A Healthier Mississippi.