Right Now in Quality Health
June 2021 – Issue 3
Newsletter Content Menu (click to jump to any section)
- A Message from the CEO: Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month
- Vax Fax Office Hours Resources
- Guide to Talking with Patients about Vaccines
- Substance Use Prevention Program Tools
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) COVID-19 Vaccination Tip Sheet Promo Packages
- “House Calls” Webinar Series Set to Help Caregivers Care for Loved Ones
- At-Home COVID-19 Vaccinations for Medicare Beneficiaries Now Available
- Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of COVID-19 Vaccines Currently Authorized in the United States: Coadministration with Other Vaccines
- Improving Cultural Competency When Serving American Indian/Alaska Natives
- Home Safety Checklist for Alzheimer’s Disease
- NIH Declares Blood Donations Safe from COVID-19
- Local Organizations Host Movie Night to Provide Opioid-Use Education
A Message from the CEO: Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month
Greetings!
There are 50 million people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias worldwide. June is Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month, a chance for you to join the Alzheimer’s Association in going purple and raising awareness about a disease that causes a slow decline in memory, thinking and reasoning skills.
Did you know there are 10 warning signs and symptoms for this disease? If you notice any of them in a loved one, don’t ignore them and schedule an appointment with your doctor. Below are the symptoms to watch for:
- Memory loss that disrupts daily life
- Challenges in planning or solving problems
- Difficulty completing familiar tasks
- Confusion with time or place
- Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships
- New problems with words in speaking or writing
- Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps
- Decreased or poor judgment
- Withdrawal from work or social activities
- Changes in mood and personality
For more information about these symptoms, visit the Alzheimer’s Association’s website and watch the video on the right. You can also learn about dementia by watching Mountain-Pacific’s TV show, Healthy Living for Life:
Someone close to me was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s this year. Knowing the signs and symptoms is helpful, but seeking help and obtaining the right resources is key to helping the caregiver, patient and health care team manage this disease. Go purple to support Alzheimer’s awareness and research!
Stay safe and well,
Sara Medley
Mountain-Pacific Quality Health CEO
Vax Fax Office Hours Resources
Mountain-Pacific Quality Health recently held a series of Vax Fax office hours, which allowed attendees the opportunity to learn more about creating a vaccine confidence strategy, ask peers questions and learn from medical experts about topics such as vaccine hesitancy among health care workers. View the recordings, slides and handouts.
Guide to Talking with Patients about Vaccines
What is vaccine confidence?
Vaccine confidence is the trust that patients, their families and providers have in:
- Recommended vaccines
- Providers who administer vaccines
- Processes and policies that lead to vaccine development, licensure or authorization, manufacturing and recommendations for use
Many factors influence vaccine decision-making, including cultural, social and political factors; individual and group factors and vaccine-specific factors. However, confidence in the vaccines, the vaccinator and the system all support the decision to get vaccinated. Keep reading about this topic.
Substance Use Prevention Tools
The Wyoming Department of Health and the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center from the University of Wyoming collaborated to create the Wyoming Prevention Depot. While this website does contain Wyoming–specific prevention data, there are several resources appropriate for use in any state. Find a catalog of environmental strategies to develop effective substance use prevention programs and federal reporting tools to help communities report accurate data to funding agencies and stakeholders. Visit the Wyoming Prevention Depot.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) COVID-19 Vaccination Tip Sheet Promo Packages
These resources were recently shared in the QI Times for long-term care facility care teams and other health care providers to support COVID-19 vaccinations. The first tip sheet offers key strategies and links to resources to help increase vaccine confidence and education. The other provides information about how to acquire COVID-19 vaccination resources for nursing home residents and staff. Sample messaging is now available to help you promote these tip sheets in newsletters and on websites and social media channels.
- Sample email messaging for sharing the CMS COVID-19 vaccination tip sheets
- Sample website, newsletter and social media messaging for sharing the Optimizing Vaccine Recipient Education tip sheet
- Sample website, newsletter and social media messaging for sharing the Considerations for Long-Term Care Facilities on Acquiring COVID-19 Vaccination Resources tip sheet
“House Calls” Webinar Series Set to Help Caregivers Care for Loved Ones
Mountain-Pacific Quality Health and AARP State Offices in Wyoming, Hawaii, Alaska and Montana invite family caregivers across the West to a free webinar series, which started on May 14, 2021, called House Calls. This series will demonstrate infection protection and other ways to keep loved ones out of the hospital.
The webinar series is free, but participants are asked to register in advance.
The webinar series comes out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Project Firstline, which offers interactive infection prevention and control curriculum for health care and public health workforces and family caregivers across the United States. The “House Calls” series aims to help caregivers take better care of their loved ones residing both at home and in skilled nursing facilities. Read the full press release.
At-Home COVID-19 Vaccinations for Medicare Beneficiaries Now Available
Biden Administration Continues Efforts to Increase Vaccinations by Bolstering Payments for At-Home COVID-19 Vaccinations for Medicare Beneficiaries
CMS is incentivizing delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to home-bound patients. To better serve this group, Medicare is incentivizing providers and will pay an additional $35 per dose for COVID-19 vaccine administration in a beneficiary’s home, increasing the total payment amount for at-home vaccination from approximately $40 to approximately $75 per vaccine dose. For a two-dose vaccine, this results in a total payment of approximately $150 for the administration of both doses or approximately $70 more than the current rate. Keep reading about this announcement.
Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of COVID-19 Vaccines Currently Authorized in the United States: Coadministration with Other Vaccines
COVID-19 vaccines were previously recommended to be administered alone, with a minimum interval of 14 days before or after administration of any other vaccines. This was out of an abundance
of caution and not due to any known safety or immunogenicity concerns. However, substantial data have now been collected regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccine currently authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use under emergency use authorization (EUA). Although data are not available for COVID-19 vaccines administered simultaneously with other vaccines, extensive experience with non-COVID-19 vaccines has demonstrated that immunogenicity and adverse event profiles are generally similar when vaccines are administered simultaneously as when they are administered alone.Keep reading about this topic.
Improving Cultural Competency When Serving American Indian/Alaska Natives
This on-demand course from the Indian Health Service (IHS) is for all members of the health care team and provides a framework for working in cross-cultural settings and a purposeful approach to understanding and adapting practices for cultural differences in American Indian/Alaska Native communities. The training describes the cultural competence model, developed by Cross, et al., and reviews the content of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) American Indian and Alaska Native Culture Card: A Guide to Build Cultural Awareness. Learn more and register for this training.
Home Safety Checklist for Alzheimer’s Disease
June is Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) developed this room-by-room home safety checklist to call attention to potential hazards and to recommend changes that can be made to help keep a person with Alzheimer’s disease safe. The checklist covers a wide range of safety concerns that may arise and should be used periodically to re-evaluate home safety as behavior and abilities change.
NIH Declares Blood Donations Safe from COVID-19
New research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) confirmed that COVID-19 does not pose a threat to the U.S. blood supply. NIH concluded that the likelihood of infection from transfusion is about 1 in 100,000, or 0.001 percent. Based on its findings, NIH supports current blood donor screening guidelines, including those used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that do not require blood testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.Learn more about this news.
Local Organizations Host Movie Night to Provide Opioid-Use Education
The Blackfeet Opioid Prevention Project in collaboration with Blackfeet Community College andMountain-Pacific Quality Health held a free drive-in movie night experience on April 30, 2021,
drawing awareness and increasing efforts around opioid use education. A grant from the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council funded community-education event.
The drive-in movie night featured Inside Out, a family-friendly comedyproduced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. One hundred community members took part and received information on opioids, opioid overdose prevention, as well as movie-going treats such as candy, popcorn and water. Attendees also had the opportunity to win drawings, which included prizes.
“We chose to do a drive-up movie for our Quick Impact Project for this year,” said Blackfeet Opioid Prevention Project Intern Christie Farmer. “Our goal was to do something for our families and community to encourage sober and healthy activities, while at the same time practicing safe physical distancing. We believe this was a fun and inviting way to get the community to come together in a safe manner.”
This event marked the end of the project’s third year, which included collaborative efforts from Mountain-Pacific, Family Spirit and various Blackfeet Community College departments and students. The goal of the project is to inform the reservation communities about the dangers and risks of opioid abuse. Christie Farmer is managing the project at this time and will complete her internship fall 2021, and Jenna Murray will take over project management at that time.
The Blackfeet Opioid Prevention Project also established a Facebook page, where community members can find more information and resources about opioid addiction. This page will provide details around virtual community involvement activities, including online contests and challenges.