Minutes Cape & Islands Health Agents Coalition Meeting Friday, January 29, 2010 9:30 AM 12:00 Noon Dennis Police Department 90 Bob Crowell Road South Dennis, MA Welcome! Introductions Approval of Minutes from December 18, 2009. MOTION. SECONDED. APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY. Attendees: Shirley Fauteux, Oak Bluffs BOH, Maura Valley, Tisbury BOH, Seanna Gretchen, BCDHE, Amy L. Wallace, BCDHE, John Powers, WTBOH, Chuck Cotnoir, Dukes County EM, Amanda Hutchinson, Aquinnah BOH, Lynn Mulkeen-Perry, BCDHE, Brian Baumgaertel, BCDHE, Judith Giorgio, Chatham BOH, Matt Poole, Edgartown BOH, Robert Hendricks, Mashpee Wampanoag, Jean Roma, BCDHE/CCMRC, Jane Evans, Provincetown HD, Paula Champagne, Harwich HD, Becky Alden, CCIARC, Diane Brown-Couture, MDPH, Lee A. McConnell, BCDHE, Glen E. Harrington, Mashpee HD, Terry Hayes, Dennis HD, Nancy Ellis- Ice, Brewster HD, Susan Rask, BCDHE, Pat Pajaron, Truro HD, Sean O Brien, BCDHE, Breda Richerson, Mashpee Emer. Prep., Hillary Greenberg, Wellfleet HD, Jane Crowley, Eastham HD, Richard Ray, Nantucket HD, Bob Canning, Orleans HD, Lisa Crowner, MDPH, Dave Carrignan, Falmouth HD, Peg Stanton, Barnstable HD, Carrie Jurlet, Bourne HD, George Heufelder, BCDHE. Updates: Jeopardy! Hot Topics in Public Health Lisa Crowner, Health Educator, Mass Dept. of Public Health (.1 CEU offered today!) The local public health education topics of H1N1, Hoarding, Bugs, and HPV. Lisa takes each answer and explains the local public health issue behind it. Topics in the news include subjects such as rare cases of Anthrax that was contracted in New Hampshire gastrointestinal Anthrax. Handouts were given pertaining to some of the answers, such as pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. George s Flounders verses Terry s Terrible Troops competed today. Terry s Terrible Troops dominated. Final Score: Terry s Terrible Troops: 2200 George s Flounders: 600 ClinicACE: Flu Clinic Online Registration 1
Brian Baumgaertel, information Specialist, BCDHE The scheduling of clinics indicated that when people have their reservation for the clinic it really calms them down. Bob tried Region 4A s registration program for vaccination clinics. After the presentation today, if you want to form a subcommittee to work on modifying the database to meet all your needs. Does it meet your needs? Who will host it and where will it be? The MRC website? With any town that can log on and register for their vaccine clinics. Brian introduces the ClinicACE program, and what it contains. He has a set of handouts that cover the general terminology and how the system is hosted through the County s web server. Brian covers the different data fields of his registration software and explains that it is customizable for your town s clinic requirements. He addresses questions about re-scheduling and addressing screening questions. The agents ask for a data box for a Medicare form. Consent forms to be added. Vaccine info sheets to be added. Questions for each individual signing up a family. Glen has an application he wants to use ClinicACE on. Adult vaccine for Hep A and Hep B, using recovery funds. He was having an idea for regional clinic for this. This would mean multiple vaccines with different screening for each and assign it through the software. Another issue to add is a clinic holding list and easy assignment piece for this. Jane: Bob pointed out that he had an outside dedicated line for calling on the clinics. If we had a dedicated outside line that didn t come through a switchboard and have someone answer it to address questions and direct it to one line in each town to not clog one line at the County. Bob: it helps with certain hours available for you to register. Otherwise you could have people leaving messages and having to call them back. Our fax line didn t allow for leaving messages and they had to call at the designated registration time. David: Is there a way for messages to be placed on our websites and a video introduction to the site registration? Jean: Is there a way to defer questions on the clinics to one line for calls? Yes. This can be done through the ClinicACE. Brian can allow it to generate a name list in Excel to refer to names at the clinic to check people in. Email blast option to alert people on changes for the clinic; say if there is a winter storm? Brian can look into this option through the County IT department. Alert systems are discussed for clinics. Related to the need for separate phone lines. The reverse alert system caused the town residents to not listen to the message and immediately called the town HD to find out what was going on. This caused her phone lines to ring non-stop for two days. Be careful of when you put out a reverse 911 system call out. People lack in listening to the message instructions. Interest in the subcommittee is from Paula Champagne, Bob Canning, Nancy Ellis Ice, George and Glen Harrington. Virtually anything the Health Agents would want on the ClinicACE registration system can be added in for your town s clinic. 2
Discussion on whether the Health Agents can learn this software through the "Joomla" software availability or whether one administrator could be used. The consensus is that the agents can learn the software because it is user friendly enough, similar to Region 4A s registration software. George: the intent is to set this up so the agents can go in and use it to adjust changes for their clinics. Jane: Bob gave us an overview of Region 4A s registration software and it was fairly easy to use. Admin functions can be set up so that it is user friendly as a Health Agents and as a member of the public registering for the clinic. Any number of people can get in to access your clinic and make changes. George: Updates: HINI Clinics: One clinic left on Saturday and then we are done. Everyone thanks Sue Rask for her work on coordination of staffing for the H1N1 clinics. She asks that you send thanks to the MRC and VNA nurses in writing so she can extend the thanks out to all those who worked to make the clinics a success. It would be good to be ahead of the state in thanking everyone that has helped with the H1N1 vaccination efforts. C&I HAC Grant and Fiscal Update Everyone is still using PHER 1 and II funding and some have switched over to PHER III. We are waiting for direction from DPH from there. Everyone should have received a report from Bethany at BCDHE; she has been logging your H1N1 expenses per town. Three to four months left on the air cards from Sprint. Please make a decision in the next month or two. If we decide not to continue air cards, we will shut them all off in about three months. It s about $600 a year on each card, depending on the card you have. As we went through theh1n1, and working with the public health nurses, our CDC grant is about the same, moving along as normal. There may be a little change in that balance. Bills go to Karen Boduch a.s.a.p. to be processed. They are making it out fairly quick. When the bill comes into Barnstable County it has to say H1N1 on it. Chatham had the biggest bill from the VNA. Only a few have had to be sent back. If a bill goes back it gets stuck in your general fund, so label them H1N1. George: To let you know how we are spending the admin money Rita spent a lot of her final days pulling those clinics together and the admin will go to that. Bethany s tracking of your money will get some of that admin money too. When Bob Canning tried out registration on the web, some of it went to that. I o.k. d some of the money to form a registration system and shaped by us for anyone to use via the MRC web site. This can be used by you to register for any of your clinics. It is intended to be a permanent clinic registration resource for you to use. Admin money went to this project as well. CC Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) Update Jean thanks all the health agents in the room for letting her coordinate the MRC and VNA it saved you a lot of money. 3
MRC was present at 55 clinics. The savings to the County was over $64K. We have more folks ready now to step up and work in EDS. Some of the Surgeon General s priorities (other public health as identified by the SG), can be worked on for the MRC volunteer involvement. Intern program being looked at. Speaker program being developed. We worked hard to step up in helping for the H1N1 clinics. We have a great team at the trailers in helping with registration, clinic coordination. Jean Roma started in September and got slammed with work and she is still smiling. Contracted Nurses Update Call down drills must ID who is in the seven positions on your call down roster forms. This person can change. If you need help with completing this drill, contact your nurse planner. An email was sent out to you with references and instructions to fulfill this MDPH deliverable. Multiyear Training & Exercise Plan (MYTEP) Update For March we are planning an H1N1 workshop. You will receive a questionnaire in advance via email. Please complete this before the coalition meeting in March. This will help us complete your credentialed workshop for the March HAC meeting. The subcommittee will meet soon to discuss how to implement additional credentialed trainings for the HAC for 2010. MDPH Update and News Diane: Just to follow up on an email a week or so ago on the internship program. Not a lot of applications to date. Don t hold back, put in applications. We want as many interns in the field as possible. A two step process. We need an intern and then match them to a project. Geography comes into play. To re-cap on the deliverables Seanna mentioned the call down drill. The site activation drill is due at the end of March. Many towns do this together, that is one way. We have a requirement for an exercise. One per community. Write it up using the AAR improvement plan. This will suffice for the whole exercise. You pretty much have all done H1N1 clinics. Write this up using your clinics. There is a lengthy application, but you can cut a lot of the info. I can work with you on this to get it on the books. Lessons Learned is a valuable record to have and share in the future. The improvement plan flows out of this. If I can help in any way, let me know. Bob Canning: All our clinics are perfect so you will have a very easy to write AAR. News Open Announcements Handouts: Richard: There is a lot more lead removal issues coming up soon for LBOH. Takes training and a contact for lead enforcement issues. The inspectors in local public health and the private sector are expected to have the training to conduct compliance checks on contractors working in houses built before 1988. Division of Occupational Safety will take the lead. Do they have the inspectors to get out in the community and enforce the requirements of the lead law? 4
Terry: EPA will contract to use inspectors. Licensing and training will cost roughly $500 A contractor will have to get license to do this. He has to be licensed to do this work on an older house. He sub-contracts as an employee and the other worker has to be licensed and trained in lead removal too. Supposedly enforced by OHS. Locations for trainings were suggested for local public health. These are located beyond Springfield and are due to be completed by April, 2010. We will try to get this out to you by April, 2010. This law as passed in 1999. Not a lot of verbiage given by the Commonwealth to local public health to remind them to get the training done and who will enforce. The state has not notified local health and inspectors in communities on septic system inspections. State is not notifying enough LBOH or private sector inspectors to complete these requirements. MHOA is doing a revision of the food code. 1999 food code will be compared with the 2005 and 2009 codes. 2009 does not use critical violations. Looking for volunteers to work on the codes. Adjourn 5