First things first, I want to say a heartfelt thank you to each of you for your hard work and sacrifices during the blizzard that blanketed our area. In the face of the storm, your commitment to providing the best care possible to the people of Central Massachusetts was unwavering. I am very proud of all of you.

Now that you have weathered the storm, I hope you find some time to do your favorite activity as a way to reset. Like Janet Zywien, a nurse manager in the operating room at our University campus. Janet and about 20 colleagues recently joined the Sherman Health Center and are taking a spin class twice a week at 5:30 in the morning. Janet says this highly motivated group of women enjoy the 45-minute class and that it helps relieve the stress associated with working in an extremely busy, fast-paced environment. I guess you can say spinning is their thing.

The UMass Memorial employee wellness initiative, myHealth Matters, has a great program that will not only keep you healthy but will reward you for doing so. It’s called “What’s Your Thing?” a terrific program that encourages our employees to continue to take care of themselves so they can take care of our patients. An important component of the program is the $200 wellness

myHealth Matters is more than just a logo and wellness initiative: it is a commitment to the health and well-being of UMass Memorial employees.

rewards available to you for doing something you already enjoy. If you don’t have a thing, that’s okay. You can find a list of available activities on the myHealth Matters wellness pages on MyHR. I encourage you to sign up for this program at your earliest convenience. The deadline is April 30.

I am excited to see all of the new ideas born from the weather challenges and adversity our health care system faced this week. If necessity is the mother of invention, then I believe adversity is the father of innovation. Like most things, adversity comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s not always as ominous as 30-inches of snow blanketing your town, it can be much smaller. Like overcrowding your Outlook mailbox by sending large documents repeatedly to the same recipients.

The phrase “email jail” is an acknowledgment that our mailboxes have limitations. Exceeding those specs. can lock up our ability to send/receive messages.

That is the very real problem the Medical Group’s Central Business Office was experiencing. Their work and computers were being slowed by these very large documents. To remedy the problem, the team decided to create a SharePoint site complete with a document library. Now those large documents can be posted on SharePoint rather than emailed. It also has the added feature to set up an alert to automatically notify recipients when a new document has posted. The site is permission-based, allowing access to only those users designated. By implementing this idea the team has cut down on sending more than 100 emails per month with large attachments. Congratulations guys, that is good enough for our Idea of the Week!

Well done!

Thanks for all your great ideas and for taking great care of our patients and one another,
Eric