Five Questions

Good morning!

Today is the last Friday of the month (and the third payday!) so I will answer your questions.

Before I do that, I want to touch on two topics.  Yesterday we hosted the third annual “Pillars” awards event sponsored by the UMMC Office of Diversity and Inclusion.  I am so proud of all the honorees, but I particularly wanted to make note of a special "Inspiration Award" presented to Jim and Donna Barksdale. This is the 20th year of the founding of the Barksdale Scholars by Jim, his late wife Sally and the Barksdale family.  With a strong focus on underrepresented minorities, the scholarships are intended to keep Mississippi’s best and brightest students at home for a career in medicine.  In two decades, the scholarships have supported 92 scholars by paying all or nearly all of their medical school expenses.  People who know Jim and Donna Barksdale recognize that they support this work because they truly care about Mississippi and want to make it better and stronger.  They are an inspirational couple and most deserving of this award.

On a (slightly!) different subject, I want to let everyone know that we have been working behind the scenes to prepare in the event that the coronavirus epidemic in China gains a footing in the United States.  There is absolutely no reason for alarm at this point, but we do have a team that has been meeting and is ready to respond to any eventuality.  We will provide updates as the situation warrants.

Now, on to your questions. 

Q:  I have a question about the new Med-Trans aviation services. While I understand that the cost of operating AirCare must be incredible, how does this change directly impact the costs for employees as state Blue Cross and Blue Shield Insurance holders? I would like to know up front if, in an emergency, the cost of air transport would be covered now that this is not a UMMC-operated service.

A:  As I’ve said many times, the health care landscape is always changing, and we have to sometimes change with it. The cost of operating a statewide medical helicopter transport program has risen to a point that it is too expensive for the Medical Center to continue to handle alone.  But we remain committed to providing this service to all Mississippians.  Earlier this month, we announced we are following the trend of academic medical centers contracting with experienced outside vendors for much of the non-medical operational aspects of their transport programs, including helicopters.  Our new relationship with Med-Trans - similar to how other medical centers are doing this - includes Med-Trans handling the price-setting and billing for services rendered by AirCare.  This also includes insurance billing.  When we were handling our own billing, AirCare services were “in network” for all insurance carriers with whom UMMC had a contract.  Under this new relationship, Med-Trans is the billing agency, not UMMC.  Currently, Med-Trans is not in network with any insurance programs in Mississippi, including the State and School Employees Health Insurance Program, which is administered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi.  Med-Trans, with our assistance, is actively working with BCBSMS and other insurance carriers in Mississippi to become in network.  We hope those insurance carriers will work with us to get this done promptly.  Additionally, on a national level, there is an effort in Washington, D.C. - with our Mississippi delegation leading the charge - to regulate medical helicopter transport pricing and billing.  This aims at affecting the industry as a whole, so charges associated with this life-saving care aren’t such unknowns for patients.  Med-Trans was selected as our vendor through a competitive process.  In addition to the experience, abilities and vendor relationships the company brings to AirCare, Med-Trans leaders have also voiced a commitment to working with patients who receive a balance bill related to AirCare services for costs the patients’ insurance carriers refuse to pay.

Q:  The new continuing education system has now been rolled out, and it has basically shifted more paperwork to the providers and has requirements that do not make sense in order to be able to claim credit. I am sure this has some benefit, but as a provider who already has too much tedious paperwork, this new system simply adds to that pile.

A:  As your comment implies, CE Central is our new online solution for continuing education event management.  Like its predecessor, CE Central allows our faculty and clinicians to share best practices, innovations in research and quality improvement initiatives through their participation as presenters and facilitators of grand rounds, journal clubs and clinical case conferences across campus.  Additionally, CE Central supports our ability to offer free CE credit for those who attend these regularly scheduled series.  Vickie Skinner, director of the Division of Continuing Health Professional Education, tells me this new CE platform offers capabilities that address a number of “pain points” we were experiencing with our former system.  These include:

• Compliance with CE accreditation across all disciplines at UMMC;
  
  
• External (non-UMMC) participants can now attend our RSS and receive credit at no charge (CHPE will absorb the additional cost of this activity);
  
  
• Maintenance of Certification (MOC) credit for some activities and some disciplines will now be possible (CHPE will begin piloting some of these later this year after the CE Central roll-out has stabilized);
  
  
• Immediate access to claim CE certificates following an event is now possible (Attendees can login and claim credit the same day they attend an event and no longer have to wait months for this data to be manually entered into Healthstream); and
  
  
• Data integrity is no longer a concern since there is now one true source of all financial, attendee and compliance data.

Although the new system introduces some changes, once it is fully implemented and the initial bugs are worked out, CE Central should provide the needed structure and systems for us to be able to continue to grow our CE offerings and better support our providers and health care teams.  More information on CE Central is available  here. The site contains tutorials on how to create an account and the process to begin planning a new CE event. Additionally, to make this platform easy to find, a direct link has been added to both the UMMC Internet and the UMMC Intranet at the far bottom left of the “footer.”

Q:  The distance between trash cans at any Disney theme park is somewhere around 25 feet. Walt Disney himself watched how far people were willing to walk before throwing trash on the ground. In contrast, my co-workers and I have made a contest out of texting pictures of crazy things we find discarded in the stadium parking lot. We find articles of clothing, unopened microwave meals, hair weaves: You name it, we have probably seen it! My favorite pastime is counting the number of slimy black banana peels between overflow parking and the red light – the remains of employee breakfasts eaten while shuffling to main campus. Could we get some garbage bins by the bus stops?

A:  As some of you know, and as I have expressed before in this column, I am a stickler for cleanliness.  When I make rounds at the Medical Center, I frequently pick up trash dropped in hallways and along sidewalks.  I hope you will do two things for me:  Discard your own trash responsibly and make the effort to pick up and dispose of trash you encounter in public spaces.  We rely on our environmental services team to keep our facilities clean, but we all share in this responsibility.  As to the stadium parking lot, Facilities Services has staff who patrol the area each morning, picking up debris.  Based on the observations you report, though, they believe locating waste containers at the bus stops is a great idea.  Look for the new containers to be installed soon.

Q:  I'm a physician and it is not uncommon for my EPIC computer charting to get locked up on a server two to three times a week. I then have to call the Help Desk Line and be non-functional for 10 to 30 minutes awaiting help to unlock my computer from the server. I am told there is no way for me to unlock it otherwise. On Sunday, Dec. 22, I was told by the IT person that only one person mans the Help Desk Line for a 12-hour shift. This is a major problem to health care at this institution when hundreds of health care workers are relying on one person for the whole institution to get them operational again. Please look into this and help. The IT person I spoke to did not know how to address complaints when I told her the recorded message heard while waiting on the Help Desk Line relates to telling the Help Desk any issues that may make their services better.

A:  I asked Ellen Swoger and Kevin Yearick, chief information officers for applications and technology, respectively, to respond:  The Division of Information Systems is always looking for feedback on how we can improve service to UMMC customers and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Our Epic and Citrix server teams are looking into the situation when a charting session may get locked up and what we can do to prevent it from occurring in the first place. There were minimal reported issues regarding this lockup situation during the month of December, so it is difficult to track this back to a server or infrastructure issue at this time. Multiple issues could cause an Epic user’s chart to become locked, and once that happens, only someone in DIS can resolve the issue.

Regarding Help Desk staffing, the average number of calls that come in on a Sunday is between 45-50 in a 24-hour period. Of course, most of these calls come in at shift change times when UMMC staff begin to use their computers or need to finish charting. Our staffing numbers fall in line with national Help Desk staffing ratios. We will continue to monitor this situation and address it in the FY2021 budget, if needed. It can be very challenging to find and retain qualified Help Desk staff because it is very much seen as an “entry level” position in information technology. The Help Desk staff are also backed up 24-7 by on-call technical and application analysts. Help Desk feedback is welcome at any time by emailing helpdesk@umc.edu, completing the survey at the resolution of your logged issue, and emailing DIS leadership.

Q:  I am finding that Garage C is almost always full after 8 a.m. We have to park in the open part of the eighth floor, exposed to excessive sun or rain. I feel despite paying nearly $1,000 per year for covered parking, we are being deprived of the privilege. We could park in the stadium if we needed an uncovered parking spot.

A:  As you probably know, the garages tend to fill up depending on peak days and the time of day.  We have more parkers early in the week and during early morning shift change when a few late shift parkers stay over while daytime employees are arriving to work.  I’m told that people arriving between 8:30 and 9 a.m. can usually find covered parking in Garage C, and our Parking Services staff report they don’t remember a time when spaces were not available in C.  Unfortunately, because of the way our garages are designed, somebody has to park on the top. Our on-campus parking capacity will increase to some extent later this year when the new garage adjacent to Children’s of Mississippi comes on line.  In the meantime, our parking folks are always looking for ways to make refinements that improve the parking experience.

Parking, of course, is one of those things that campuses like ours always struggle with.  In some ways, we are better off than many.  We just have to manage the best we can.  I appreciate everybody’s patience and perseverance, as we stay focused on our goal of A Healthier Mississippi.