Communication is a big part of providing the very best care we can to the communities we serve. And it has become all the more meaningful now with such important messages to be shared about COVID-19.
Cybercriminals are using the coronavirus pandemic to develop new phishing and identity-theft scams. Several federal agencies recently warned that scammers are preying on people's interest in COVID-19 vaccines to steal money or personal information.
Here are some things to watch out for:
Recruiting for inpatient and outpatient clinical positions—like nurses, nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, virtual monitor techs and certified medical assistants—is difficult under the best situations. Add in a pandemic and it becomes even more challenging.
Our Talent Acquisition team has faced the situation head-on and successfully made hires that help us improve the health of the communities we serve.
We are now more than 10 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and our positive patient numbers continue to rise. However, teams at each of our hospitals have been working diligently and coordinating efforts to prepare for this.
We have scalable surge plans in place systemwide that we are using to handle the influx, and it is helping us maintain operational continuity and provide care.
We were the first health care system in Virginia to activate electronic case reporting (eCR) for COVID-19 after joining the nationwide eCR Now initiative, led in part by the CDC.
By automatically creating and sending case reports to public health agencies, eCR saves valuable time—for our providers and for the public health officials involved in case investigation and contact tracing.
Captain Edmund K. (Ed) Watkins has been named to succeed Chief Steve Lugar as the new chief of Police and director of Carilion Clinic Police and Security. Chief Watkins will take on this new role on Jan. 2, 2021.
Your password is valuable – it protects your identity and personal information. Your Carilion password also protects our organization’s information (including patient information). That’s why cybercriminals will go to great lengths to find out your password.
Since receiving the vaccines Tuesday afternoon, over 300 of our frontline workers were given their first of two vaccine doses. Their second dose will be given in about 17-21 days.
“This is the next phase of our response to the pandemic,” said Chad Alvarez, senior director of pharmacy and the leader of our COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force. “By providing the vaccine to our colleagues who work day in, day out on the frontlines of the pandemic, we’re better able to help our neighbors in need.”
We received our first shipment of 4,000 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine this afternoon. The initial batch will support vaccinations of frontline health care workers with direct patient care responsibilities at our facilities. Also included in that shipment were doses destined for non-Carilion hospitals in our region who do not have the appropriate freezers for storage.
