Five Questions

Good morning!

As many of you know, I hosted our fifth COVID-19 virtual town hall meeting yesterday, during which Molly Brasfield, Dr. Alan Jones and I responded to a number of your questions submitted during the livestream or through the VC Notes comment feature. We had good viewership yesterday, but not everybody will be able to view the town hall, so I will recap some of the highlights today as part of my commitment to answering your questions on the last Friday of every month.

Before I begin I just want to share my thoughts about the reduction in force that we experienced earlier this week. As part of the mitigation of the projected $100 million loss we will incur by the end of September, we recognized that some employee separations were unavoidable. On Wednesday, we implemented the workforce reduction for 253 employees. My heart goes out to these individuals. To lose one’s job is a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking experience. My sincere hope is that these former employees are able to land on their feet and locate gainful employment in the near future.

For those of you who were involved in managing this reduction, thank you. There is nothing harder for a manager than to tell an employee that his or her position has been eliminated, and by all accounts, you did this with professionalism and compassion. I appreciate it.

Many of you have asked if we will have more layoffs. My hope and intent is that we will not, but I can’t promise you that because I can’t tell you with precision what the future holds. However, based on everything I know right now, Wednesday’s reduction in force encompasses all the employment actions currently planned.

Now, on to your questions.

Q: Since the virus does not seem to be contained, has any consideration been given to allowing employees who are teleworking to continue in that capacity beyond May 31?

A: As I said recently in VC Notes, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot as a society continue with a shelter-in-place mentality indefinitely. As we ourselves can well attest, the economic consequences are exacting a heavy toll on our citizens. We have to find ways to co-exist with the virus, using all the CDC-prescribed guidance to protect ourselves and each other – including social distancing, facemasks, handwashing and sanitizing surfaces. We are an academic medical center, and it is time that we get our teams fully functioning and back at work. With that said, we are looking at our current telework policy and considering adjustments based on what we’ve learned from this recent experience where as many as 1 in 5 employees has been working from home. But any policy changes will come at some point in the future, and for now, we are working under the current policy. Employees who have documented medical reasons to work from home may seek an accommodation, but to ensure fairness, any decision that permits an employee to continue to telework needs to occur under the auspices of Human Resources and not at the unit level.

Q: I am concerned at the lack of adherence to the mask policy. What is the plan to enforce it?

A: That is an important question, and it’s especially critical in regard to the return to campus (and other locations) of students and employees who have been teleworking, because that will increase the number of people in our physical spaces. Like you, I have seen a lot of people on our campus – employees and students – not wearing masks when they should be. We do not want to have to create a new unit – the Mask Police – to enforce this policy. So please, when you are not at your desk or otherwise physically distanced from others by at least 6 feet, wear your mask! Why is this important? Because in the early stages, people infected with COVID-19 are often asymptomatic, but they can still spread the disease. Some infected people never have symptoms. So wearing a mask not only protects you, it protects your colleagues and our patients. I hope that our managers will model good behavior and wear their masks, and ask their employees to do the same. And I hope that our community will collectively, as gently as possible, ask their peers to wear their masks.

Q. Is there a plan to test every employee on campus for the disease?

A: No, that is not under consideration. Dr. Alan Jones, our clinical response leader for the pandemic, says that per CDC guidance, only persons with COVID-19 symptoms – fever, cough, sore throat or shortness of breath – should be tested. If you have any of these symptoms, don’t wait: Contact the employee-student hotline (601-496-6284) to get screened and tested. If you are infected, any delay in screening only increases the likelihood that you will spread the infection to others. Thanks to the heroic efforts of our scientists and laboratory professionals, our in-house testing capability has greatly increased to more than 1,000 tests per day. And even though we are running tests for the Mississippi State Department of Health and others, priority is given to our own patients, employees and students.

Q: Is the increase in our uninsured COVID-19 patient caseload the result of rising unemployment or are other facilities dumping their patients on UMMC?

A: We are definitely seeing an uptick in the number of uninsured patients in all categories, not just COVID-19, and that is no doubt due to rising unemployment. Fortunately, the federal Cares Act provides reimbursement to health care entities that provide care to COVID-19 patients. We do receive a substantial number of transfers, but the vast majority of these are from smaller facilities that are not equipped to care for these patients. Patients are also transferred to us so they can participate in the range of clinical trials we are offering. In any case, with our census of COVID-19 patients pushing a high-water mark of 90 this week, we are beginning to have discussions about what is the limit to the number of COVID-19 patients we can sustainably provide care to over what is appearing to be many months, at least until a viable vaccine can be developed. Caring for these patients is mentally and physically demanding on our staff. At a certain level, it diverts resources from other patients who may desperately need our help. As time wears on and one perceived “peak” gives rise to another, we’ll have to evaluate what our limits are.

Q: Why weren’t employees who are eligible for retirement forced to retire before other employees were terminated?

A: The short answer is that we cannot compel employees to retire, even though they may be eligible, as was noted by Molly Brasfield, chief human resources officer, in yesterday’s town hall. We do have the ability to provide an incentive for employees to retire, and that is something that could be considered if we find ourselves with a need to make further staffing reductions. I hope we don’t come to that. The fact is, when we eliminate positions, that just leaves more work for the employees who remain, if we are to maintain the same level of service. There’s a limit to what we can ask our employees to take on and I think in some cases we have reached it.

I’ll close by saying that I remain very proud of the work you are doing. It is hard. It is exhausting. It can be frightening. But we will get through this and be stronger for it. #UMMCStrong