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Happy Occupational Health and Safety Day, HRD! Also known as the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, this holiday was established by the International Labor Organization in 2003 to highlight the need for everyone to have a safe and healthy work environment. April 28 is also Workers Memorial Day, which honors the millions of Americans who have been killed, injured, or made sick while on the job. It also commemorates the 1970 passing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which created work standards for American employers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to enforce those standards.
This week in HRD history: The launch of the Have You HRD? newsletter! In April 2015, the HRD Quality Improvement Committee (QuIC) published Volume 1, Issue 1 of Have You HRD?, a quarterly newsletter focused on continuous improvement projects going on within the division. In late 2019, the newsletter began publishing weekly issues, and with the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, the focus of the newsletter shifted to be more about division news and events, so that staff could easily keep up to date with everything that was going on. You can see all the back issues of Have You HRD? in the Have You HRD? Archive.
HRD Town Hall recording is available in our Stream channel: We had 130 people join us for our Town Hall on Tuesday – that’s almost half the division! If you weren’t able to join us, you can find the recording in the Stream tab of our MDH_HRD Team with all of our other recordings. There are also slides available in the Files section of the General channel – the graphics showing the recommendations from our Strategic Action Planning Teams were a little hard to see on a screen. Our next Town Hall will be Friday, June 23, at 1 p.m.; if it’s not on your calendar yet, check out this week’s Today I Learned section below to find out how you can add it!
New SSIS Pilot Release Cycle began on April 27, 2023: When you open Horizon to access SSIS, please use the icon labeled SSIS Worker Pilot. You should use the pilot application whenever SSIS is in the period between a pilot release and the full statewide release, which means you should use it until the end of the workday on Wednesday, May 24. The next morning, May 25, you will use SSIS Worker Production. You will continue using that until the next release cycle starts on July 27.
Perceptive Content bug fixes and new features are now live: This week we released several updates and bug fixes to Perceptive Content for the Licensing, Evaluation, and Enforcement workflows. These included:
- New routing options in the Enforcement workflow to allow staff to move items more directly.
- Fixing a bug in the Evaluation workflow that was causing the Event ID, Start Date, and Evaluator to be deleted from driver documents for survey revisits.
- Making the Provider Type field in the Licensing workflow a dropdown menu instead of a text field. When we did a review of our data in PC, we found some inconsistencies in how provider types were entered; this will make sure we’re all using the same codes and eliminate typos. (It’s also a pre-requisite for our PC Retention Manager, which we’re currently building.)
If you have questions about the updates will affect your work, or an idea for improvements to Perceptive Content, talk with your supervisor.
This week, we want to reiterate that it is MDH’s policy that staff stay at home when they have symptoms of COVID-19 and have not been tested or are awaiting test results. Remember, it is not possible to distinguish between SARS-CoV-2, allergies, or other respiratory viral infection without testing. This is important for all of us, whether we are working in the field or not – you never know who might be immune-compromised or have family members who could be higher risk. Symptoms to look for include:
- Fever of 100.4° Fahrenheit or higher, or feeling feverish (e.g., chills or sweating)
- A new cough
- New shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
- Unusual fatigue
- Muscle or body aches unrelated to exercise
- New headache
- New loss of taste or smell
- A new sore throat
- New congestion or runny nose
- New nausea/vomiting or diarrhea
For staff who are entering health care facilities: Any staff who have potential symptoms of COVID should NOT enter a healthcare setting without having tested negative for COVID at least once. A second negative test, 48 hours later, but prior to entering the healthcare setting, may be required. A second test would be appropriate per the guidance if a staff person has ongoing symptoms, or higher concern for COVID such as an exposure. For more detailed information, please see the guidance on MDH’s Health Care Worker Isolation and Exposure Recommendations, under the heading, “Evaluating health care workers with symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
In addition, staff should be monitoring community transmission levels and masking in accordance with the location of the health care facilities they are entering. If a facility is in a low transmission level area, and is not in outbreak status, but the health care setting is still choosing to have their staff continue to mask, we should be respectful of the facility’s expectations and also mask. You can find information about community transmission levels by county at the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker: County View.
It can be tempting to disregard symptoms, especially if they don’t feel serious and you’re worried about getting your work done and supporting your team, but our top priority is keeping Minnesotans safe. That means taking care of yourself and others by staying home when necessary.
May Day is just around the corner. As a child, I loved filling the baskets we had crafted from construction paper [and decorated with crayons] with fresh popcorn, mixed candies and chewing gum. It was fun to deliver the baskets- ringing the bell and running before being caught. May Day was fun, and it signified the coming end of the school year and summer break! Today- May Day reminds me we have again made it through winter! Even if we get a late snow, we know it will melt quickly and our gardens will soon be in full bloom. The days are longer, and everything greens up and everything is fresh and new again.
Our work is very important, and very fast paced with never a dull moment. Over this past year, I’ve had the privilege to lead this division as the Division Director. It has been an amazing but challenging role. I have enjoyed learning about the work we do in different areas of the division, and getting to know many of you better. You are the glue that keeps this division together & functioning in a forward and positive way. Thank YOU!
One of the things I’ve been doing to help with work life balance, is trying to be done with work at the end of the day, usually by 5. In addition, I am being more thoughtful about making time for breaks- to eat and to powder my nose. Some days go better than others, but I make an intentional effort. I hope each of you will also do the same. We work hard. We need to take care of ourselves too.
I am grateful to work with each of you & am excited to stand together as we continue to move our division forward to meet our goals to ensure the safety and care of Minnesotans.
Maria King
HRD Division Director
This week, Kia Moua became our newest supervisor! Kia will be leading the Federal Licensing, Certification, and Registration (LCR) team, effective April 26, 2023. Kia has been with the Minnesota Department of Health since 2016 and has worked in the licensing unit for both state and federal the last six years.
With Kia’s leadership skills, licensing knowledge, and enthusiasm, we look forward to her being successful in this supervisory role!
Thanks to Shellae Dietrich for sharing the news of Kia’s promotion with us. If you have a team milestone or important announcement to share with the division, you can send it to Health.HRDCommunications@state.mn.us and we’ll put it in a future issue so that we can all celebrate with you!
This week, we have the following positions available, and more are coming soon. Please share them with anyone that you think would help make HRD a better place to work!
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State Rapid Response Supervisor, Job ID: 65159: The Rapid Response Supervisor will plan, organize, direct and implement policies, procedures and activities related to evaluation of state licensed health care providers. This will include supervising a group of evaluators responsible for the evaluation of state regulated providers, facilities, practitioners, and technicians. Closes May 1, 2023.
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Nursing Evaluator, Job ID: 65029: Use your nursing knowledge and expertise to be part of a team that provides surveillance and evaluation of health care providers to confirm compliance with Federal and State laws and rules related to the provision of nursing and health services. This position will be based out of the Mankato district office location with 75% of work time spent on-site performing surveillance of facilities located in the South/South Central region of Minnesota. When not on-site, remaining follow-up work is performed by teleworking from your home office. Closes May 1, 2023.
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Intake Specialist, Job ID: 65182: The Intake Specialist manages critical and time-sensitive complaints and incident reports received for state and federal licensed or certified healthcare providers and facilities. This position is responsible for determining the action needed for these complaints and reports, according to statutory guidelines and timeframes. The information is received via web-based reporting systems, letters, phone calls and e-mails. Closes May 2, 2023.
These positions are open to internal and external candidates. If you would like to apply, please follow the steps below:
- Sign into Employee Self Service
- On My Homepage, click on Careers and enter the Job Opening ID in the Search Jobs box and click Search.
- Click on the job title to view the job posting.
- Click Apply for This Job in the top right-hand corner.
This week, we’re exploring a new way to add Teams events to your calendar. Outlook and Teams don’t yet match up completely in terms of features, but if you schedule meetings in Teams channels, this can make things much easier.
If you’re not Scheduling Meetings in Teams Channels, you totally should be! Scheduling a meeting in a channel means that all of the chat, files, and recordings are saved in your Team, and anyone who joins your team later will have access to them without you having to find things and share them manually. Channel meetings also allow people to add things to their calendar without needing to forward invites.
Until now, channel meetings were useful except for one big thing – there was no way to see them in Outlook, unless you already had them on your calendar. You could put a calendar in your Team, like the HRD Calendar, but it’s limiting – there’s no monthly view. But now you can! (I hope you read that in your best 90s late-night infomercial voice).
Here’s how:
- Open your Outlook Calendar.
- On the left-hand side, scroll down the list of your calendars until you get to the bottom, where it says All Group Calendars.
- Check the box next to the item labeled MDH_HRD (outlined in red in the lower left of the image below). The MDH_HRD calendar should appear next to your calendar.
 Here you can see all of the meetings that are scheduled in our MDH_HRD team – Town Halls, Siobhain’s Office Hours, and a meeting for the PC Retention Manager Module. From here, you can right-click on any item and click Add to Calendar (circled in purple below) to… add it to your calendar. Pretty sweet, right?
 If you’re thinking, “This seems really useful, how could I enable this for my Teams?” You’re right! All you need to do is cut a ticket to the MNIT Service Desk. Tell them that you want to add “Team Name here” (Make sure to include the “MDH_”) to the Outlook Exchange so that your calendar is visible. You can also reference Request ID REQ000002336859 so they can see a previous example of this ticket.
Questions about how to use all the tools we have at our disposal? Looking for ideas to improve your workflow and manage your tasks better? Check out the MDH Connect page to see all the resources they have available, including bite-sized APP Tips, in-depth resources, and weekly presentations and meetings for brainstorming.
This week, HRD welcomed the following people to the division. Send them a message to say hello!
- Amanda Anderson, Federal Operations (Evaluation)
- Megan Smith, State Operations (Evaluation Workload Scheduling)
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