COVID-19 Employee Update

Covid-19 Response

March 28, 2020

COVID-19 is a rapidly evolving situation; given that, we want to keep you, our UMMS employees and medical staff, as informed as possible. We will continue to send regular updates as necessary. We thank you in advance for your continued hard work and support of our patients, visitors and one another.

 

Need to Know

 

  • “I want to take a moment to personally thank each and every one of you for what I am seeing as the tireless effort that we are collectively putting forward on behalf of the communities we serve, the State of Maryland, and indeed, the nation.” Dr. Mohan Suntha addressed the System in a video message yesterday. Please take a moment to watch and know how much you are appreciated. 

 

  • Dr. Suntha and COVID-19 UMMS Incident Commander Dr. David Marcozzi hosted a conversation with UMMS employees on Thursday. Thank you to everyone who participated! Missed the webinar? Click the image below and stay tuned for future events. Also, see answers to your questions from last week’s webinar.


 

UMMS LEADERSHIP MOMENT MARCH 26, 2020 from UMMS Web Services - Internal on Vimeo.

  • We know the extension of school and child care closures is a major source of anxiety among working parents right now. UMMS continues to explore additional options and partnerships across the state and will post any updates to our COVID-19 Child Care Policy page. In the meantime, a list of child care providers who have been approved to serve essential personnel (including health care workers) in Maryland can be found online. You can also call a LOCATE: Child Care Referral Specialist at 1-877-261-0060 and a specialist will help you identify a child care provider that’s right for you.
  • Released our Testing Guidance and Testing Algorithm to help our providers prioritize COVID-19 testing for high-risk patients and make the most of our resources. View the full message and accompanying FAQs here. 
  • Extended our policy to cancel all elective and non-emergent surgeries through April 15, 2020. We will continue to review this policy on a bi-weekly basis. 
  • Protecting employees who directly or indirectly care for patients is always our highest concern and is especially critical during this pandemic. UMMS released an Excused Patient Care Policy identifying higher-risk employees, such as pregnant women and those with underlying medical conditions, and defined the process for reassignment or being excused from caring for PUI/COVID-19 patients.
  • One of the benefits of being part of a larger health system is the ability to support one another during this unprecedented event. UMMS released Surge Management Guidelines for outpatient, inpatient and emergency departments to ensure that we are in a position of readiness as we begin to see an increase in patients.

Good to Know

  • UMMS coordinated with the American Red Cross to host a three-day blood drive at UMMC to help relieve an unprecedented blood shortage. We anticipate collecting more than 240 units of blood, which could save as many as 720 lives. Thank you to everyone who donated. We hope to continue blood drives System-wide.
  • The state of Maryland has made 2,400 additional beds available in its fight against COVID-19. UMMS is helping lead a joint effort to establish an alternative care surge facility at Baltimore Convention Center. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan recently toured the facility.
  • Last week, UMMS adopted a Strict Patient Safety Policy, meaning no visitation is allowed unless under limited and specific exceptions. This policy has been updated to indicate that clergy members do not count toward the total number of visitors for patients receiving end-of-life care. For all other patients, members of clergy are considered a visitor. Additionally, we released an enhanced Volunteer Policy, which will require volunteers to participate in a screening process before entering any hospital to volunteer, System-wide.
  • UMMS experts continued to provide information and insight to our communities, locally and nationwide. See Wilbur Chen, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a member of Governor Hogan's Coronavirus Response Team, on CNN and Neel Vibhakar, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of UM Baltimore Washington Medical Center, on FOX45.

Helpful Resources

This content is for Internal Use only.