I CARE Recharge 2021
Kicked Off This Week Our annual I CARE Recharge kicked off this Monday. The 2021 I CARE Recharge focuses on celebrating and expressing gratitude for our employees' outstanding commitment to our I CARE values through the past year. Tomorrow you should receive a special I CARE video, looking back over our historic past year. Look for these additional special items or interactive celebrations:
Commemorative Challenge Coin
Take a look at this video of Dr. Charles Millikan, VP, Spiritual Care, explaining why the challenge coins are being distributed and thanking each of you for your commitment over the past year. Your coin should arrive at your home this week. Shine Your Guiding Light
Our Center for Performing Arts Medicine (CPAM) partnered with Spiritual Care on interactive light art pieces to recognize contributions at HM lobbies. The art piece is designed to look like the night sky. If you’re on-site, visit the lobby display at your hospital. If you're remote, use this form to share with us what has helped you navigate through this time. Writing Our History
This interactive art piece honors the innovators and innovations that helped us through this pandemic. Silhouettes of our employees will represent what it takes to provide a compassionate environment of care. Artist, Marlo Saucedo, outlines the mural and asks you to write your name or the name of a person who left a mark on you during this last year. Enter your name here for the artist to include in the canvas.
Join Jim Francis for a Fireside Chat
Tomorrow, March 11, noon – 12:30 p.m. Join us online for a special HM Corporate event hosted by HR. Jim Francis, our VP of Technology and Shared Services, will share stories from his career journey, his role in IT and his thoughts on innovation. Click to join the Webex event tomorrow, March 11, noon - 12:30 p.m.
Password: FIRESIDE
Looks like Texas is starting to feel like home!
Disaster Recovery Drill
Saturday, March 27On Saturday, March 27, we’ll host our next disaster recovery drill. This is important to ensure we’re prepared in the event of a severe application or system incident. Your manager should already have spoken with you, if you’re required to participate.
Progress on Our ITST Journey
ChangeGear 8.0: New Launch Date, Monday, March 29ChangeGear 8.0 will now launch on Monday, March 29. Last week we completed our open ticket cleanup and our twice-weekly Q&A sessions to help everyone through these changes. To date, 337 Incident Requests have been converted to Service Requests.
Known enhancements and changes in progress
Here are several high-priority enhancements and issues identified and escalated with our vendor. Resolved - Closed Date field is not auto-populating; this should auto-populate three days after the Request Validation action is executed.
Resolution coming with ChangeGear 8.0 - Promote feature: Allows you to change an Incident Request to a Service Request and vice versa.
- Adding Resolved Date and Resolved By fields to the Service Request module.
- Removing Vendor Hold or Customer Hold in the Service Request module.
Future resolution - Add the ability to save custom views in Workspace for Activities-All.
- Promote feature: Auto-populate the Application Resource Class field when promoting from IR to SR and vice versa.
- Eliminate the error message of too many characters in the Comments section: Current workaround – upload images whenever possible.
For questions, ask your team's Ticket Queue Manager. For more information about the IT Service Transformation Program, visit https://it.houstonmethodist.org/ittransformation/.
IT New Employee Orientation (NEO)IT NEO was held virtually via Teams on Tuesday, March 2 with 17 participants. The morning was spent with introductions of our VPs and learning more about our new IT employees. In the afternoon they met with representatives from each of our five groups (Clinical and Ancillary, Corporate Systems and Innovation, Technology and Shared Services, Security and Assurance and Ambulatory and Physician Support) as well as HR. The employees also enjoyed pizza delivered for lunch at their homes. Special thanks to Dixie for coordinating lunch! If you have new
employees who were unable to attend or are joining soon, send their names to Marcella Fewox so we can add them to our next IT NEO.
Attn Leaders: Human Resources UpdatesClick to download the March staff presentation. Communicating with your staff, especially during this time when many are working remotely, is an important part of employee engagement and retention. Use this opportunity to host video team meetings and have two-way conversations with your team.
Reminder: All IT Employees Should Have Already Updated Your Windows Operating SystemLast month we sent out reminders about updating your Windows Operating System to the latest version of Windows 10 (version 20H2). Because most IT employees are working remotely, the request is for IT employees to complete this update on their own.
Review this list to verify if a member on your team has not completed this update and share this reminder message with them.
March 7 Epic Update Complete! Huge Shout Out to everyone involved in the successful Epic Update this past weekend. This is a true team effort across IT. The team completed the update in a record time of just 67 minutes, ticket volume remains low and no tickets were logged for the Epic Applications team between 11 p.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday morning. To top it off, Ambulatory and ECSA teams resolved an issue with e-Prescribe in a super speed response of just 46 minutes. With this Epic Update, we also launched a new Outpatient Epic Rehab module and the Epic Wound Care module for inpatient
clinicians. The weekend also saw updates for SharePoint, LMS, MARS and SecureAuth. Congratulations everyone on a job well done!
Finding Dialysis During Winter Storm
Patient Access Systems Employees Kester McCuin and Shayla Garry Help Patients Weather the StormMany outpatient dialysis facilities across our city were closed during the winter storm. Patients needing admission for dialysis began flooding the HMW ED however, HMW doesn’t perform this treatment, so patients needed to be transferred to HMCCH for treatment. There wasn’t an easy Epic workflow for this unusual situation, but Kester McCuin and Shayla Garry quickly built a new patient Leave of Absence workflow to address this need. This resulted in patients receiving only one combined bill instead of two bills for the ED visit and HMCCH admission. While they were testing the new configuration, both Kester and Shayla lost power but they tag-teamed the work, depending
on who had power. “It’s extraordinary that they were able to respond so quickly and be so resourceful with all the challenges that everyone had,” said Tom Elias, Patient Access Systems manager. “This is an illustration of our team’s resilience and adaptability This was a critical time, and we got the job done.”
Rita, Leslie and Jon Help Bring Us Seasons of Love
With the Center for Performing Arts MedicineOur very own Rita Barraza, Leslie Klinksiek and Jon Raines are part of the Houston Methodist Singers. Listen to their beautiful rendition of Seasons of Love. "It was great fun. You listen to the music in your headphones and video yourself. Then you send it in, and someone puts all of the videos together. That's really the most interesting thing," said Leslie Klinksiek.
Avoiding Work-From-Home Fatigue Working from home can have its benefits, but there are some downsides to working and living in the same space. The same technology that allows some of us to do our job remotely can be both rewarding and taxing. Take advantage of these tips to combat work-from-home fatigue.
- Avoid bringing work life into your personal or family environment.
- Create a distinction. Do your work in a designated space and at the end of the workday turn your computer off and walk away from it.
- Unplug from technology. Turn the phone off or leave it in another room.
- Create a commute
- If you had a 20-minute commute before set aside that time to start your day. Listen to a podcast, drink your coffee, go for a walk. Do this at the end of your workday too.
- Take Breaks
- Organize your day with short breaks – add them on your calendar and treat them like a meeting invite.
- Remember the walk from your office desk to the conference room? You'd chat with a colleague and stop in the breakroom to make a cup of coffee? We don't have these anymore, but you can still create these micro
breaks.
- Work Outside
- Take your laptop outside and work in the sun for short periods of time. Or just change your location for short stints.
- Have a walking meeting instead of video conference call. Take your meeting from your phone and step outside for a walk-n-talk.
Send us your anonymous ideas. What ways are you
decompressing or creating work/life balance? Here are a few additional resources you may find helpful:
Congratulations to Our February WinnersBRAVO Boosts recognizes outstanding IT team members each month from a random selection of those who have received an eCard. Winners receive a dinner (valued up to $100) to enjoy virtually with their managers and IT Leadership. To send an appreciation eCard, click the BRAVO tile in MARS.
Laurie Cruz, Sr. Applications Analyst "I appreciate the hard work that you do for our patients and customers. You bring your A- game to work every day. I pray that you remember to also take care of yourself in mind, body and soul. Stay safe and stay warm this weekend!"
Noemi Garcia
Rick Dewar, Technical Analyst "Rick, I would like to recognize you for the outstanding effort you did with the BCA workstations here at HMB. Your tireless efforts have really made a difference."
Marcos Trevino
Claude Moussa, Sr. Applications Analyst "Congratulations on the development and implementation of SoftMolecular Auto Verification Enhancement Activation for COVID Testing, a time-saving enhancement for the molecular laboratory department and community hospitals. We are the first SCC client to implement auto verification in the SoftMolecular application. Yeah!! With an average of 2000 specimens per day being processed by the molecular lab, this enhancement is expected to save about three hours in technologist time and improve the turnaround time for resulting COVID testing. Great job!!"
John Valenzuela
Tijo Njaravelil, Mobile Developer "Thank you, for being so resilient during last week’s winter storm. I know it was very stressful for everyone during various times of last week, and I am very appreciative to the efforts behind making yourselves available when occasionally not having power or water or even having degraded cell phone coverage. That was tough, so a well-deserved Bravo!"
Stephen McTague
Saima Abbas
New Hire
Director Software Services and Access Technology
Benetta Albaugh
New Hire
Applications Analyst
Thomas Au
New Hire
Applications Analyst
Kelly Bowen
New Hire
Applications Analyst
Eli Rockers
New Hire
Applications Analyst
Matthew Truong
New Hire
Applications Analyst
Wandoo Gbadebo
Promotion
Sr. Applications Analyst
Jennifer Nuttall
Promotion
Sr. Applications Analyst
Minh Tran
Promotion
Mobile Product Manager
Murat Uralkan
Promotion
Director Center for Innovation
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