5 Questions

Good morning.

Today is the last Friday of the month, so I’ll respond to some of the questions/comments you’ve sent to me through the VC Notes inbox.

Before that, though, I want to remind you that tomorrow begins annual benefits open enrollment. Your opportunity to initiate, cancel or make changes to your elective employee benefits runs Oct. 1-31.

This is an important period for you to make sure that everything is set up the way you want it, including your and/or your family’s health insurance. For more information, visit the open enrollment Intranet page here.

Now, on to your questions.

Just as a reminder, I read all of your questions and comments and enjoy hearing from you. I’m only able to respond to some of them in this space, but I pass the rest along to senior administrators for their review and possible follow up.

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Q:  I know that our UMMC prescription card has a CVS emblem at the top. Does this mean that we need to use CVS pharmacies in order for our insurance to be in effect?

A:  It can be a bit confusing to see CVS listed on our pharmacy benefits card, but it doesn’t indicate your only option to fill your prescription is their pharmacies.

For many years, Caremark was the logo on our pharmacy cards and is still the entity that manages our pharmacy benefits, but they’ve been a part of the CVS organization since a 2007 merger. It’s just recently that the logo on our cards changed to include the parent company, CVS.

You can go wherever our pharmacy benefits plan is accepted to get your medications. To find participating pharmacies, you can use this Pharmacy Locator tool on the Caremark website. (Log in required.)

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Q:  What is the status of getting badge swipe at the Cups by the Gift Shop? 

A:  Cups now runs our coffee shops in the University Hospital lobby as well as the one in Sanderson Tower. PJs Coffee runs the shop in the Pavilion. At this time, badge swipe for payroll deduction is not available at those three shops.

We have been negotiating with a back-end payment vendor to again make badge swipe available at these shops. It was necessary to do new contracts with this vendor following the ownership change of those three coffee shops. We hope to have a new contract in place and everything operationalized for you to be able to use your badge by the end of the year.

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Q:  What happened to the Covid patient count and information on the Covid update page on the intranet?

A:  It was helpful and revealing during the highest points of the pandemic to see listed on the Intranet each day how many patients we had with confirmed or suspected COVID.

While we continue to treat patients who have COVID, – current numbers are around 10-15 per day – doing so is now built into our normal processes and isn’t the outlying endeavor that it was in the past. However, if we see another spike, we will adjust to meet that need. Treating patients with COVID is a way of life now in our hospitals, like any other transmissible condition, so keeping daily tabs on those numbers is no longer necessary unless it again causes an increased strain on hospital operations.

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Q:  I do not know who to ask this but what happened to the BankPlus ATM by Chik-fil-A? That was very convenient for those of us who currently bank with them. Any plans to bring it back?

A:  ATMs in our facilities are placed there by each bank and through a contract in each case. Legally, for an ATM to be placed on our campus, the bank must pay a lease for that space. In this case, BankPlus chose to remove the ATM from the location you specified instead of entering into a new contract when the previous one ran out.

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Q:  Is there any update on the employee survey we took a couple months back?

A:  The Executive Cabinet and I were briefed a few weeks ago on an overview of the results and over the last two weeks, all supervisors across UMMC were invited to attend a presentation led by a Press Ganey rep who shared the results in detail. Supervisors across the Medical Center now have access to the online portal they will use to access their unit-level data. Human Resources has made the presentation accessible on the Intranet here. On Monday, Oct. 3, there will be a feature article on the survey and results that will share the high points of the data – and the areas for improvement.

Employees should expect their unit/department leadership to use the results specific to them to drive conversation and/or change specific to their area. The institution-wide data will be used by Medical Center leadership to shape action plans that will be shared broadly as they are implemented.

Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey and provide your valuable feedback.

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Again, thanks for all of the questions and comments you send to me through VC Notes inbox, found here. Keep them coming!

We are full into Fall now, however short it may be for us this year, and I hope you have a chance to get outside and enjoy the comfortable temperatures.

Thank you for all you are doing each day to help make the UMMC engine run as we care for patients, train the next generation of health care professionals and work toward new discoveries all for an overall purpose – A Healthier Mississippi.