issue 05-08
issue 05-08
August, 2005
Inside this issue...
HCA welcomes new PH Managers - Page 1
HIPAA security reminder - Page 2
New Traditional Foods Project focus at town hall meeting - Page 3
Employee Recognition - Page 4 and 5
Ordering System Goes Live - Page 6
Spotlight on Excellence - Page 6
Sandy scales Mt. Whitney - Page 6
September Health Observances - Page 6
The Orange County Fair held annually in Costa Mesa made its way through town again with this year's theme, "It's Callin' You Out to Play—Year of the Avocado."
Joining in the Fair's festivities of carnival rides, food, contests, entertainment and exhibits, HCA's Health Promotion Division hosted a booth inside the Fair's Orange County Building to inform fairgoers of the many available resources HCA offers.
After snacking on deep fried guacamole and other Fair-themed foods, visitors stopped by HCA's booth, which was decorated with papier mâché shaped avocados to coincide with the Fair's theme. The booth also featured an interactive healthy lifestyles game, which encouraged participants to hop, skip and jump on numbered avocados.
Also available to booth visitors again this year was the Agency's informational one-page flyer, which contained a listing of phone numbers and website addresses to the Agency's programs and services.
Other community organizations and County agencies were stationed inside the Orange County building along with HCA including the Orange County Sheriff's Department, Registrar of Voters, Department of Fish and Game and Orange County Vector Control to name a few.
Thank you to all the friendly and helpful HCA employees who volunteered their time to staff the Agency's booth during the Fair's hours of operation.
HCA welcomes Mary Davis who will serve as Division Manager for California Children's Services. Mary brings 14 years of managerial experience, including several years with CalOptima in the areas of case management, utilization management, quality assurance and compliance.
Mary also has experience in hospital based management, where she held positions as the clinical manager of neonatal intensive care unit and supervisor of utilization review.
Mary previously served as HCA Program Manager for Public Health Quality Improvement and Program Compliance. She is a licensed Registered Nurse and Certified Health Care Quality Professional.
Kindra Dimitriadis has been selected to serve as Information Technology Project Manager for Public Health. Kindra holds a bachelor degree in nursing from Cal State Long Beach and has previously worked with the St. Joseph Health System and Mission Hospital on implementation of electronic medical records and charting systems. Kindra began working with HCA Public Health in September 2004 as a consultant coordinating various IT developmental projects.
Both Mary Davis and Kindra Dimitriadis began their new roles with HCA on Friday, July 22.
We have all worked very hard to comply with HIPAA by securing the privacy and confidentiality of our client's protected health information (PHI). We have implemented numerous policies and procedures as well as technical safeguards. We have moved our PHI off our PC hard drives and onto shared servers, and we've learned to password-protect our documents that contain PHI when transmitting them through email.
Having put all these processes and controls in place, it is easy to relax and think that all is well with HIPAA and HCA. This might be true, but only if we continue to be diligent about following through with the new processes and controls. Two areas that require our focused efforts are Access Controls and Remote Access.
Access Controls have been put in place to allow only those individuals who have been identified by their supervisor or manager to access ePHI sitting on HCA systems such as IRIS. In other words, if you need to access a client's ePHI in order to perform your job functions your supervisor/manager has submitted the Network Access Request Form to HCA/IT. In turn, HCA/IT has given you access rights to that system by providing you with an ID and password which allows you into the system.
When an individual changes job duties, transfers or separates from HCA, their access rights must be reviewed and action taken as appropriate. It is up to the supervisor/manager to immediately notify HCA/IT via the Network Access Request Form of the required changes.
Our Access Controls are only as good as our processes that support them. If individuals have access to systems they no longer need to access, or worse, if an individual is separated from HCA under unhappy circumstances and their access rights are not immediately deleted, we have compromised our Security and our client's ePHI.
A compromise in Security of our client's ePHI also occurs when ePHI
is sent home via email or carried home on a disk. Although the intentions may
be quite honorable (catching up on paperwork, chart notes, or reports), taking
ePHI outside the secure environment that we
have built at HCA is counterproductive. Remote
Access is the only secure way we can work on ePHI from home. If
your supervisor or manager feels that it is necessary for you to work from home, a
request can be made to HCA/IT to provide you with a token which will allow you
to
securely access the ePHI maintained in HCA's secure environment without
compromising the ePHI or the environment.
For more information on Access Control and Remote Access contact the HCA/IT Help Desk at (714) 834-3128.
The HCA Compliance Program offers a
confidential telephone hotline to voice your concerns about
any situation that may conflict with Compliance
Program principles. You may call the hotline 24 hours a day, 7
days a week at:
(866) 260-5636
What's UP is a newsletter for employees of the County of Orange, CA, Health Care Agency.
Editors
Tricia Landquist Landquist
Howard Sutter
Anne Fialcowitz
Your Input
Phone (714) 834-6644
E-mail TLandquist@ochca.com
FAX (714) 834-7644
Pony Bldg. 38-S, 4th Floor
Environmental Health's Food Protection Program hosted a town hall meeting on July 13 for Westminster community leaders and restaurant owners at the Westminster Community Services & Recreation Center to share information about the Traditional Foods Project. The new project adopted an exciting and innovative way of encouraging the Fresh is Best concept among food preparers within the Vietnamese community.
HCA joined local city and government officials and community members in presenting the new voluntary project to those who were in attendance.
The project began in September 2003 with local Vietnamese restaurant and market owners coming together with community leaders, health educators, academia, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Health Care Agency to find creative solutions to food safety issues within the community.
A major goal of the Partnership Committee was to make improvements in food safety without compromising the food's taste or quality for consumers. The committee reviewed the characteristics of traditional Vietnamese foods, identified specific foods for laboratory analysis, and modeled food storage and handling procedures on guidance provided in State health laws. The result is that using time limits on food storage vastly improves the safety of foods.
For more information about the Traditional Foods Fresh is Best Project, visit the Food Protection Program's website at www.ocfoodinfo.com/fresh_is_best or call (714) 433-6000.
In conjunction with World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) (August 1 to 7), Governor Schwarzenegger proclaimed August 2005 as Breastfeeding Awareness Month, declaring, "Breastfeeding forms the most basic bond between mother and baby and is a foundation for lifelong health and wellness."
In celebration of this proclamation, HCA's Nutrition Services/WIC program sponsored numerous breastfeeding awareness activities. Some events included visits to Orange County doctors by WIC and Orange County Breastfeeding Coalition lactations specialists, who provided up-to-date breastfeeding resources and promotional materials that support breastfeeding among the doctors' patients.
Program staff also collaborated with more than 40 local libraries, which each received a donated book on breastfeeding for their collection, a comprehensive Breastfeeding Resource List, and breastfeeding awareness materials to display during the month of August. The WIC program also created breastfeeding displays in all HCA WIC clinics and in the 17th Street HCA reception area and staff lounge.
A special display in the Hall of Administration lobby promoted the Governor's Proclamation, the WBW theme of "Breastfeeding & Family Foods: Loving & Healthy", and the American Academy of Pediatrics' newly-revised Breastfeeding Policy Statement. Also highlighted was an exciting Nutrition Services/Community Nursing collaboration now underway to study the effects on breastfeeding rates among WIC clients of enhanced one-on-one breastfeeding education and support by county Public Health Community Nurses.
For help with breastfeeding, call the Nutrition
Services Breastfeeding Helpline at (714) 834-8363. For more
information, or to assist Nutrition Services/WIC in
promoting/supporting breastfeeding, call (714) 834-7986.
Behavioral Health's Nga Nguyen celebrated her 15 years of service and received
recognition from Agency Director Julie Poulson and Sandra Fair, Chief of Behavioral
Health Operations.
Agency Director Julie Poulson and Steve Franks recognized Diana Perez for her 15 years
of dedicated service and presented her with a certificate and pin commemorating
the occasion.
10 Years
Public Health employees Victoria Vu and Patricia Stabile celebrated their 10 years
of service to HCA and are pictured alongside Agency Director Julie Poulson and Dr.
Mark Horton.
Celebrating their 10 years of service to HCA Danielle Boucher, Phyllis Crane and
Karen Hoffman-Winberry were honored at the July 28 Employee Recognition Awards and
received certificates and pins from Sandra Fair and
Julie Poulson.
5 & 10 Years
Maureen Robles, Institutional Health Services Division Manager recognized Medical
& Institutional Health employees who
celebrated their 5 and 10 years of service to HCA.
Pictured (left to right) are Maureen Robles,
Tinh-Chau Nguyen, Raj Sidhu and Julie Poulson.
The Health Care Agency (HCA) Purchasing Department, Auditor-Controller, and CEO Purchasing Department are proud to announce the implementation of a new electronic ordering system. After a successful pilot test at HCA involving Maternal & Child Health, Nutrition Services, Children & Youth Services and Children Mental Health Outpatient _ East Region, it was determined that the system should be launched throughout the rest of HCA. Phase I of the rollout has now been completed and Phase II, which will encompass the remainder of HCA, is scheduled to take place this fall. It is anticipated that the system will also be implemented County-wide.
This new system has been employed to reduce staff time involved with invoicing and payment processing, as well as the time involved with placing orders and order approval. Besides these administrative savings, there is cost savings anticipated as a result of a new pricing structure and additional discounts to the County. One new cost-saving feature of the new system is the introduction of the concept of "Best Value Pricing." Items ordered with this classification have a combination of quality, quantity, and price that make it the most beneficial for the County to order. CEO Purchasing has estimated a cost savings on supplies of approximately 18% with the new system. The biggest advantage to the customer is the noticeably quicker delivery time (next day delivery in many cases).
The new system is 100% web-based, and all ordering is accomplished via Office Depot's Business Services Division website at: https://bsd.officedepot.com/index.do. The website is user friendly, and has many new features including customized shopping lists, automated re-orders, and an 18-month order history. With this new system: there is no longer a need to create an Advantage Desktop requisition; there is only one immediate approver for an order; and you will no longer be required to submit packing slips to accounting/purchasing. In addition, paper can now be ordered directly from Office Depot.
Based on the success with this project, it is anticipated that other electronic ordering systems may be investigated in the future. Thanks to all HCA staff who participated on this project and made this automated process a reality.
Sandy Viernes of Quality Management's Desktop
Publishing Unit recently scaled the top of Mt.
Whitney on June 26 and is pictured alongside Summit Hut.
Cool temperatures during the month of June didn't prevent
Sandy from reaching the snow-capped peak at 14,497 feet high.
Baby Safety Month
Healthy Aging Month
National 5 A Day Month
National Food Safety Education Month
National Preparedness Month
Ovarian & Prostate Cancer Awareness Month
Suicide Prevention Week 4-10
National Rehabilitation Week 18-24
Family Health and Fitness Day USA 24
National Adult Immunization
Awareness Week 25 (through October 1)
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