New York Life and Cigna have created the Brave of Heart Fund, dedicated to providing healthcare workers and their families with peace of mind. The Fund is designed to provide financial support in the form of charitable relief grants to support the families of healthcare workers who lose their lives to COVID-19.

It is State policy that all available doses of the COVID-19 vaccine must be used as quickly as possible. Therefore, it is critical that all vaccine providers plan accordingly to ensure every dose is administered. All providers should keep a daily list of “stand by” eligible individuals to be notified of open appointments for vaccine administration on short notice.

As soon as providers are aware that there are more doses than people to be vaccinated, “standby” eligible individuals should be called, or other steps must be taken to bring additional eligible recipients to the facility or clinic before the acceptable use period expires. However, there may be times that there are doses of vaccine that remain at the close of business or the end of a vaccine clinic and no one from the priority population can come in before the doses expire.

OPWDD, OMH, SED and OASAS recently conducted a series of webinars in place of on-site trainings on the January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020 Consolidated Fiscal Report (CFR). The CFR webinar series can be accessed on YouTube at the following links:

These webinars have been developed to make it easier for providers to train staff in CFR preparation, to give providers the ability to access CFR training at the time most convenient for provider agency staff, and to try to achieve a greater degree of accuracy in provider CFR submissions.