VNSNY Heroes of 2020
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Secure Remote Access in a Flash? No Problem for the IT Heroes of VNSNY!
March 22, 2020–What happens when the nation’s largest home- and community-based healthcare organization has to mobilize its workforce to work remotely during an emergency global health crisis? “It’s a time to focus all our resources on enabling our clinicians and users to provide gold standard patient care,” says Michael Orlando, Director, IT Services. In fact, if you’re reading this article right now from your VNSNY laptop, phone or other device, you’ve got the heroes of the VNSNY IT team to thank. The connectivity they’re providing is what enables the rest of us to keep our organization and its many online facets moving like clockwork during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the biggest challenges the IT team faced in the last two weeks was to get VNSNY’s office staff at 220 East 42nd Street set up on laptop computers so they could work remotely, as ordered by Governor Cuomo as part of the
VNSNY Heroes of 2020: Our Medical Supply Room Staff—Working to Ensure Our Clinicians Have What They Need
March 19, 2020–Among our many important front lines of care in the fight against COVID-19 are VNSNY’s Medical Supply rooms, where our dedicated clerks and supervisors come to work every day to equip our clinicians with the resources they need to safely deliver care to patients. As supplies of hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes, gloves, masks and isolation gowns run low across our region and around the world due to the novel COVID-19 coronavirus, VNSNY has been carefully directing these vital supplies to those clinicians, patients and members who have essential need for them. This poses a special challenge for our Medical Supply office clerks and supervisors, as they work with our clinicians to manage the demands of the pandemic and its profound impact on all our patients’ daily lives. “We as an organization have been through many things in my 38 years here,” says Emilio Rosado, Manager of Patient Administrative Services, ticking
VNSNY Heroes of 2020: How to Cope with COVID-19? “Go the Extra Smile,” Says Partners in Care HHA Mahalia Bennett
March 17, 2020–It’s been more than three months now since the COVID-19 coronavirus became headline news, but in the past few weeks, as New Yorkers brace themselves for what could be a months-long public health crisis, home health aide Mahalia Bennett is calm and focused. Armed and informed with VNSNY patient and staff safety protocols, she’s got two secret weapons that make her a frontline health hero at Partners in Care, where’s she’s worked as a HHA for nearly two decades: she loves to learn, and she knows how to get a smile from just about anyone. “You just have to talk to people,” Mahalia says. “They are dealing with so many things. You have to find out about what’s going on in their minds. Are they afraid? Get them to talk it out with you.” For Mahalia, each new client is a new adventure, and as New York City grapples with
VNSNY Heroes of 2020: Dedicated VNSNY Staffers Keep Chinatown and Flushing Community Centers Open
March 17, 2020–As non-essential businesses all across the New York metropolitan area close to help mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the dedicated staff at VNSNY’s Chinatown and Flushing Community Centers are putting extra precautions in place so that they can keep their doors open as a lifeline of care and connection for the vulnerable New Yorkers they serve. While the situation remains fluid, the Centers will remain open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily until further notice. “We have to stay true to our VNSNY mission—we are here to serve—and will be here as long as we possibly can,” says Teresa Lin, Director, Cultural Market Development Initiatives. “There’s a lot of fear and a lot of need in the Asian community right now, but people know they can walk through our doors and we’ll be here to help them. We’ve been here for more than twenty years, and they