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September 26, 2023

Regional & Divisional News

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In This Edition

Opportunities for Aspirus & St. Luke's
Employee Pulse Survey: Oct. 2-16
Employee Vaccination Clinics
Change to Web Browser Settings
Enhanced Pager Services
Last Chance Deadlines: Sept. 30
Malicious Links
Oct. 11 Epic Upgrade: Training Available
Understanding AFib
Aspirus Heart Care Winter Conference
Attention Veterans: Share Your Photos
Loss of Medicaid/State Benefits: Adding Aspirus Benefit Coverage
Newlyweds' Guide to Money
EAP Front Line Newsletter
Reminder: COE & Annual Assignments

Potential Opportunities for Aspirus & St. Luke's

As you know, Aspirus Health and St. Luke’s are pursuing an affiliation to expand access to care across Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our affiliation will grow our impact as we strive for our common goal of improving health care across our region. This affiliation will present many exciting opportunities for our patients, communities and staff.

Click the button below to read more about these three opportunities.

3 Opportunities

Employee Pulse Survey: Oct. 2-16

Our next pulse survey will occur from October 2-16. Aspirus is genuinely committed to being a great place for employees to work and for patients to receive care. These surveys help Aspirus understand how best to support you as an employer. Your personal feedback is critical in helping ensure you are getting the resources you need most.

The survey will be distributed by our survey vendor, NRC Health. You will receive a unique survey link emailed to your Aspirus work email address on Monday, October 2. The email will be sent by NRC Health and feature the subject line Action Requested! Aspirus Employee Pulse Survey.

Note: The email will include the blue external sender banner at the top. Don’t worry. This email is legitimate and safe.

Your feedback from recent pulse surveys has helped influence many programs and improvement initiatives, including:

Communication – Implemented a monthly Leader Communications Toolkit and briefing.

Well-being – Created monthly well-being focus areas to create a positive work environment, increased the number of wellness-champion-led department wellness activities, and are working to integrate wellness initiatives into local committees.

Recognition – Our Aspirus Story campaign highlighted the contributions of Aspirus team members past and present.

Please click the link within the email to complete the survey. It will only take a few minutes to complete, and your responses are confidential.

Thank you for your honest feedback and engagement.

Employee Vaccination Clinics

Participation in the Aspirus Influenza and COVID-19 Safety Programs is mandatory by October 31. Read the September 13 memo to learn more.

Employee vaccination clinics are available throughout the system. (Please note: The updated COVID vaccine is not yet available at Aspirus Health.) Click the graphic or consult the events calendar on the intranet for available times and locations. Clinics are on a walk-in basis and do not require you to sign up in advance.

Change to Web Browser Settings

A change was recently made to our web browsers to help the performance of our intranet by reducing the number of times our intranet is loaded across the system. When you open a web browser on your computer, the intranet will continue to open as your default homepage. Any subsequent tabs that are opened during your browser session will open either a Google (in Chrome) or Bing (in Edge) search page for browsing the web. You can always navigate back to the intranet at any time using the “home” button in either browser.

Enhanced Pager Services Available

Integrate your pager and mobile device

Aspirus Health team members now have access to a new offering that enhances pager services. In partnership with our longtime paging vendor, American Messaging, AMSConnect can now be bundled with your existing pager. Benefits include:

HIPAA compliant*.
Integration with your current American Messaging pager.
Network redundancy – Never miss a page. Receive your critical pages on your pager and mobile device.
Added convenience – Receive pages on your mobile device without workflow interruption.
Expanded coverage – Pages can be received on your mobile device anywhere you have cellular or Wi-Fi service.
Peer-to-peer messaging capabilities.

* Users should not send PHI to pagers or via the AMS Connect application.

AMSConnect is a replacement for Pagecopy to cell and is available to any Aspirus team members currently using an American Messaging pager. To sign up, contact the Aspirus Service Desk by calling 715-847-2300 or use the self-service portal to have your mobile device enrolled for app installation. Once your device is enrolled, you can search for AMS Connect in the Apple App or Google Play store.

A full app tutorial video and short feature videos are available for reference.

Last Chance Deadlines: September 30

PTO Buy-Back Election

Employees interested in participating in the October 2023 PTO buy-back program have until September 30 to submit their request in GHR using the PTO Buy-Back Submission Form under Benefits > Information.

Full Details

Nominate Clinicians for Award of Excellence

The deadline to submit your nominations to recognize the accomplishments of physicians and advanced practice clinicians (APCs) is September 30.

The nomination form is available via the Aspirus intranet: Life & Career > HR & TOTAL REWARDS > REWARDS & RECOGNITION. Here’s a direct link to the form on the MedStaff intranet.

Danger in Disguise: Malicious Links

Malicious links in phishing emails can trick you into visiting dangerous websites.

Here’s a situation you may have seen in many movies or TV shows: The hero or heroine gets into a taxi but soon realizes they’re being driven away in the wrong direction. Surprise! The driver is a villain, and the taxi is a trap. While such attacks aren’t common in real life, cybercriminals rely on the basic principle when targeting victims with phishing emails that contain malicious links.

Like a waiting taxi, a malicious link in an email promises to take you where you want to go online. But once you click on it, you’re headed to a more dangerous web corner. And you might not realize your mistake until too late.

Fortunately, malicious links aren’t dangerous unless you click on them, and everyone can learn to spot the warning signs.

What can I do?

Avoid clicking links in emails. There are safer ways to visit a website. You can use a search engine to find a legitimate website or use a known web address you’ve previously bookmarked.

Become an expert at spotting malicious links. Engaging with your organization’s security awareness training program is a great way to learn more about avoiding phishing, malware, and other cyberattacks.

Help protect others by reporting suspicious emails. Your organization’s email platform may have a button that lets you quickly report potential phishing. Or, you may need to forward the message to a specific IT inbox.

Tips for Family & Friends

You can help your family and friends stay safe by sharing your knowledge about malicious links. They may also have cybersecurity knowledge or experiences that you could learn from.

Don’t give in to curiosity. Clicking a link in an email to see where it goes might seem harmless, but the risks are real. Be especially cautious if the email sounds frightening or too good to be true.

Protect your login credentials. Never enter your username or password in a website unless you are absolutely certain you’re on an official, legitimate site.

Pay attention to warnings in your browser. If you click a link in an email and get a secure certificate warning or a pop-up error message, it could be a phishing site. Don’t panic, but immediately close the website and do not interact with it.

Oct. 11 Epic Upgrade

Training dashboards now available

The next Epic upgrade goes live on Wednesday, October 11. Visit the Epic Learning Library to see changes coming with the upgrade that will directly impact your role.

Press F1 from within Epic, or use these links:

Epic Downtime Printing Procedures Tipsheet

Atrial Fibrillation (AFib)

Understanding the electrical disorder of the heart

Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) disrupts your heart's rhythm, but did you know it increases the risk of stroke and heart failure?

Aspirus Cardiothoracic Surgeon Dr. John Johnkoski explains how this heart condition can lead to serious complications.

Visit the Aspirus Media Center for other recent stories featuring Aspirus experts.

Save the Date: Aspirus Heart Care Winter Conference

The 32nd Annual Aspirus Heart Care Winter Conference is set for Friday, March 1, 2024, at the Hilton Garden Inn of Wausau. This educational event is free for Aspirus employees.

Registration will open closer to the event date but mark your calendars now for this full-day conference. Watch for details about topics, speakers and registration to be shared within the next couple months.

Attention Veterans: Share Your Photos

This Veterans Day, Aspirus will once again honor our incredible veterans on our social media platforms. We are seeking photos from current and former service members currently working with Aspirus.

Needed:

Military photo + name and military title exactly as it needs to be written
Current photo + name and Aspirus title exactly as it needs to be written

Submit to: socialmedia@aspirus.org

Deadline: Wednesday, November 1

Examples from last year:

Loss of Medicaid/State Benefits

Adding Aspirus Benefit Coverage

The Medicaid renewal period is now underway and will continue through May 2024. State agencies are sending letters outlining the actions that must be taken to renew eligibility and avoid a loss in Medicaid coverage.

If you carry health, dental and/or vision insurance (for yourself and/or your dependents) through a Medicaid State program, such as BadgerCare Plus or the Healthy Michigan Plan, you may need to go through the renewal process. This is to determine if you are still eligible to participate in the program.

No longer eligible for coverage?

Any employee (and/or dependents) determined ineligible to participate in their state Medicaid program can request to enroll in Aspirus coverage via the “Life Event” module in GHR.

Click the button below for enrollment deadlines, information on how to enroll, and more.

Enrollment Deadlines, Info & More

2024 Health Insurance Discount

Complete your activities before Oct. 31!

If you are participating in the Health Insurance Premium Discount Program, the deadline to complete your wellness activities is October 31, 2023*.

Act now to ensure you have enough time to complete your activities before the deadline! Don’t wait – take charge of your health and well-being while saving big money!

Log into the wellness portal at www.managewell.com to check your status for the Earn 2024 Health Insurance Discount:

If you see a colorful trophy stating you earned your reward, congratulations!
If you see a greyed-out trophy displaying the percentage you’ve completed, you still have work to do. Click on “learn more” to find out what steps you may have missed.

Complete and submit all wellness activities before end of day on October 31, 2023*.

Contact Business Health (wellness@aspirus.org / 844-309-1269) if you have questions about your status or the steps you need to take to earn your reward before the deadline.

* If you were newly eligible for insurance during the year, your deadline is December 15, 2023. Log into the wellness portal for more details on how to complete the program steps.