5 Questions/Topics

Good morning! 

It’s the final Friday in March so today I’ll respond to some of the questions and comments I’ve received through the VC Notes inbox.

First, though, a couple of items.

Also, I want to bring to your attention an event recently added to the UMMC calendar. Dr. Darrell Kirch, who served as president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges from 2006 to 2019, will be our next Vice Chancellor Lecture Series speaker at noon on Monday, August 21, 2023. We are honored to host Dr. Kirch, and I’m sure his talk will be enlightening and “can’t-miss.” Hope to see you there.

Now, on to your questions and topics of interest.

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. You can submit your question or comment to the VC Notes inbox here.

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One of the topics I most often get questions about via the VC Notes comments mechanism is food services. I have an additional update to recently implemented changes to food services on the main campus that aim to improve your meal-time experience, especially for our night-shifters.

Below is the new daily schedule:

• Breakfast: 6 - 10:30 a.m.
• Lunch (all stations open): 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
• Afternoon options including salad bar, grab and go, hand-crafted burgers, soup and pizza to order: 2 – 5 p.m.
• Dinner including salad bar, soup, grab and go, cooked-to-order grill, specialty bar and comfort foods: 5 – 7 p.m.
• Evening options including salad bar, soup, grab and go and cooked-to-order grill: 7 – 11 p.m.
• Overnight meal with options including salad bar, soup, grab and go, cooked-to-order grill, specialty bar and comfort foods: 11 p.m. – 2 a.m.

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I received several comments about improvements needed to our housekeeping, so I went to our institutional leaders who manage our relationship with our environmental services vendor, HHS, for information.

Recent initiatives have been implemented to improve the cleanliness of the areas where you work and our patients receive care.

A new executive director for environmental services recently took the helm, and additional turnover is expected in housekeeping leadership. Increasing weekend supervision and staff is a high priority. Keenly aware of the need for improvements, the new leadership’s goal is to plan and roll out best practices in housekeeping.

The training program for housekeepers has been improved, especially for those EVS staff who are cleaning patient rooms. In addition to this measure, HHS is engaging with nursing leadership to increase and improve necessary maintenance and post-patient care terminal cleans.

There’s been renewed focus on housekeepers completing their assignment sheets during shift and getting them reviewed by a supervisor. This is intended to allow for more real-time improvements in cleanliness rather than finding out later that something was left undone or not done properly. 

All of our areas – regardless of the work being done there – need to be clean. Our expectation is that these recent moves will cascade into positive improvements across the board. But, as always, I want you to feel free to speak up if you see something that needs to be addressed.

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Q: It has come to my attention that consistently when residency programs at the medical center are discussed, the physical therapy residents are left out and not mentioned. There are 3 fully accredited physical therapy residency programs here at the medical center. It would be nice for them to be included in your resident count, as these 3 individuals are going above and beyond to not only treat Mississippians, but also grow the profession as a whole, both at the state level and nationally.

A:  You are correct. Physicians are typically what comes to mind for most people when the topic of residents comes up. But there are a number of other specialty training programs active at UMMC and those residents also deserve to be highlighted and receive our appreciation for the role they play in patient care.

In addition to the residency programs through the School of Medicine’s Office of Graduate Medical Education, there are post-graduate-degree residents in our hospitals and clinics through the schools of pharmacy, dentistry and health related professions. And all of these programs are experiencing the same success that I’ve shared regarding how well our medical residency programs are doing.

So, for our institution, when it’s “Thank a Resident Day,” we need to be mindful of all of our residents and recognize the impact they have in our clinical enterprise at the same time they are engaged in advanced learning and specialty training. Our residents are vital members of the UMMC Health System staff.

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Q: On the overhead paging system I heard a code stork called. At the time I did not know what the code was for. I looked it up on the Intranet but did not find it on the list of codes or anywhere else so I turned to Google where I found this meaning.
"Code Stork - Missing Infant under 28 Days Old
Signals an infant under 28 days old is missing. Report physical description of individual (age, sex, ethnicity, and hair color) and give the location where the infant was last seen. Personnel will attempt to retrieve the infant or prevent the abduction."
I do not however know what the UMMC protocol is for this code. Is it treated the same as a code pink/amber? Should there be an all-clear announcement?
In HealthStream I found a module on how to properly report a code stork but not a definition or action plan for staff to follow.

A: Code Stork was implemented in the Fall of 2022 as an adjunct to the neonatal rapid response pathway. When Code Stork is announced through the overhead speakers, it alerts the Neonatal Rapid Response team of an unanticipated delivery outside of the regular labor and delivery area and/or a neonatal rapid response on the Mother Baby Unit or at Women’s Urgent Care.

Code Stork was implemented in collaboration with nursing staff and providers from the departments of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology following an emergent event when the paging system was down and Vocera did not work properly.

A HealthStream learning module was made available to train impacted medical staff and providers about this new response pathway.

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Q:  It seems increasingly difficult to find phone numbers for employees. There are many employees that have the phone number 601-496-9600 listed as their number when you do an employee search on the intranet. This number is not even a valid number.

Q:  I routinely spend 30 or more minutes per episode of attempting to contact individual employees based on the number that is provided in the Intranet Search feature. Many times, if not most, the number provided is either incorrect or only lists the main hospital operator number. Is there a way that this can be updated, or even required to have the most current number? I understand that employees move around from area to area and sometimes transfer throughout the system, however, the time it takes to finally track down the correct person is wasting valuable time as well as impacting patient care. 

A: I went to Kevin Yearick, chief information officer for technology, to get some information to respond to these two similar submissions.

He said that the Division of Information Systems has been working on solutions for this issue.

Our employee directory is populated with the contact information that is entered into Workday. Employees who are not assigned a telephone number by the hiring manager are automatically given a placeholder number of 601-496-9600. The number is supposed to be updated following orientation using provided directions, but that doesn’t always happen. 

This May, DIS will change it so that new hires will automatically have their department phone number assigned to them in Workday until it is changed to their actual personal number. This should cut down significantly the steps to get to who you want to talk to if the number doesn’t get updated as intended.

To help improve the accuracy of the numbers in our directory, please check your information in Workday and make any necessary changes.

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Again, thanks for these and all the submissions to the VC Notes inbox. I appreciate hearing from each of you. 

In closing today, I want to highlight another group within our health system staff that sometimes doesn’t get the recognition they deserve. Social work is a tough job and the social workers at UMMC are essential members of the patient care team. Sometimes, a social worker can make a huge difference in a case that results in a positive outcome. They spend their days ensuring that patients and/or families feel seen and heard, and social workers are right there during the most difficult times. We owe our social workers our gratitude and recognition for the role they play every day for A Healthier Mississippi.