DATE: December 23, 2020
TO: All CWA Local 1168 Members at DeGraff Memorial Hospital
FROM: Executive Board and Special Directors of CWA Local 1168
RE: OR Opening at DeGraff
On 12/14/20 and 12/15/20 members of the Kaleida Health Leadership team met with the leadership teams of CWA and SEIU to discuss how to temporarily open the OR’s at DeGraff to provide elective Orthopedic Surgeries that would normally be performed at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and GI procedures that would normally be performed at Buffalo General Medical Center.
The OR’s would run from 7:30AM – 5 PM for the orthopedic surgeries and would require staff to come over from MFS OR who are competent in Orthopedics. This would include Surgical Services RN’s, Surgical Technicians, PSA’s, RNFA’s, PA’s, Anesthesia Assistants and the Service Line Leader. Tentative start day will be toward the end of week of December 21, 2020
The GI Lab will be operational from 7am-5pm. This will require that Special Procedure RN’s, Tech Assistants and a Secretarial employee volunteer to work at DeGraff. The plan is to open 2 procedural rooms to accommodate the volume. If approved, tentative start date will be after January 1, 2021.
There is also a plan to open a Domicile Unit on 5 West on a temporary basis. The participants will be discharged from one of the Kaleida sites and they would become a VNA client. These patients would have met the criteria for discontinuation of transmission based precautions from a symptom based standpoint (10 days from the first COVID positive test, asymptomatic and afebrile for the last 72 hours without the use of anti-pyretic medications). The unit will be staffed by VNA.
Additional staffing will be needed to support these efforts. DeGraff employees will be offered extra time/overtime prior to anyone else being offered the time. This includes EVS, Pharmacy, Radiological Technician and Lab Staff. Additional hours will be posted for EVS staff at DeGraff and MFS to pick up to support this effort. Additional Physical Therapy staff needed will be provided by DeGraff Physical Therapy. Human Resources has reached out to employees that are on the recall list and on the layoff list that may meet the criteria to be recalled to work.
We are currently reviewing the staffing model as it currently exist in dietary. There may be a need for additional staffing, overtime and extra time as the volume in these areas increase.
Please contact Frank Santiago at 690-2041 (EVS) or Scott Sponholz at 573-7851 (Automated Replenishment) if you are interested in working any extra time or overtime as the need arises.
This is a great opportunity to more traffic within our halls of DeGraff and showing others what a great place DeGraff can be once again.
We realize that you will have many comments, questions and concerns that may not have been answered in this brief update, please contact the union office at 716-639-1168
