April 7, 2020

As COVID-19 continues to dominate the news, cause widespread closures and cancellations, and disrupt our normal way of life, it can be especially challenging for patients and their families who depend on us for their care. As we adjust to this new change, there’s one thing that has not changed – our commitment to ensuring our patients and families have convenient access to the care they need, when they need it.

One of the ways to help stop the spread of COVID-19 is to limit the number of patients and visitors at all of our locations across Texas – including hospitals, specialty care clinics, Pavilion for Women community clinics, Texas Children’s Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Urgent Care and The Centers for Children and Women. To keep everyone safe, many in-person visits can now be converted to a phone or video appointment. Texas Children’s e-Health team – in collaboration with other departments across the system – has rapidly expanded and enhanced e-Health services to make it easier and more convenient for patients to connect with a Texas Children’s provider without leaving their home.

“Providers are very eager and excited to offer virtual visits to ensure the continuity and convenience of care to children and women especially during these challenging times,” said Dr. Robert Ball, maternal fetal medicine physician and medical director of e-Health. “As more physicians are trained and enabled to provide virtual care to their patients, we are rapidly transforming the landscape across Texas Children’s.”

Texas Children’s providers and patients are taking advantage of the benefits of e-Health capabilities. On March 23, providers began having telephone appointments with patients. In the first three days alone, almost 2,500 patients were able receive care via telephone from the safety of their home across Texas Children’s Hospital, Texas Children’s Pediatrics and Texas Children’s Health Plan. On March 26, almost 1,000 providers across the hospital were introduced to training to be able to give face to face care through video visits to their patients. This is also expected to take off rapidly and be a “customer obsessed” solution for our patients. The roll out of video visits across care locations change how Texas Children’s delivers care, not just during this emergent time, but for the long-term.

With the demand for e-Health services on the rise due to COVID-19, our e-Health team, nurses and leaders have worked collaboratively to develop other strategies to meet our patients’ needs. Below is an overview of some of the enhancements that have been recently implemented:

COVID-19 Nurse Triage Line – This new feature allows parents of current patients to call 832-822-6843 (832-82COVID) if they think their child has symptoms or has been exposed to COVID-19. The line is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and operated by specially trained pediatric nurses. The nurses will triage calls, provide basic COVID-19 information, or schedule a video visit with a provider for further evaluation. The COVID-19 nurse triage line is for pediatric patients only.

Virtual Visits – To keep our patients, their families and our staff safe, many pediatric and women’s services in-person visits are now being converted to a phone or video appointment. If a patient’s appointment is a fit for either option, clinic team members will contact patients directly to provide more details. We encourage patients to continue to schedule appointments with their Texas Children’s providers, and to visit texaschildrens.org/appointment for more information about current options.

Texas Children’s Pediatrics (TCP): TCP has changed its scheduling work flow to have a physician review all appointment requests for the health and safety of all patients arriving at TCP locations across Houston, Austin and College Station. If a patient’s health screen indicates symptoms or exposure to COVID-19, TCP will convert the patient to a phone or video appointment. e-Health options are new for TCP practices and is growing quickly. Between March 12 and March 27, TCP completed 567 video and 1,653 phone appointments.

Texas Children’s Health Plan (TCHP): TCHP has also been focused on getting key provider communications pushed out, with the most important messaging being around supporting the delivery of telemedicine services. The Centers for Children and Women are conducting their visits via phone and have added nine trained providers to the ranks of approved physicians licensed to conduct video visits. Additionally, Texas Children’s telemedicine platform Anywhere Care has seen an uptick in patient visits. For more information about Anywhere Care, click here.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has really impacted the way we provide care,” said Texas Children’s Chief Information Innovation Officer Myra Davis. “This health crisis has presented an opportunity for us to leverage the benefits of e-Health. Historically our outpatient care has been provided at Texas Children’s locations, and e-Health has created a paradigm shift where we our meeting patients where they are.”

Ball has seen the benefits that e-Health offers to our providers and patients, especially those patients and families where physical access to a Texas Children’s facility can be difficult.

“I think e-Health has been an incredible game changer for us,” Ball said. “Everybody deserves a Texas Children’s provider, and this is an effective tool that we can use to create this opportunity for them.”

E-health Resources

Please visit Texas Children’s Coronavirus Connect page where you will find links to internal documents with updated information about COVID-19, as well as our e-Health Training and Resource page that includes information on telephone and video visit requirements, consenting, and FAQs.

April 1, 2020

In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Texas Children’s remains dedicated to ensuring we are a source of information and expertise.

When COVID-19 first appeared in the Greater Houston area, Texas Children’s immediately began to prepare for what was later categorized as a pandemic. In early March, our leadership activated a modified incident command structure, convening teams for Planning, Logistics and Operations at the Medical Center Campus, West Campus, The Woodlands Campus and at the Health Plan. This positioned us to respond quickly and agilely as the global health issue evolved.

We also immediately launched targeted outreach to our Texas Children’s patient families. In early March, we emailed about 400,000 current Texas Children’s patient families to answer common questions, ease uncertainty, and introduce our information-rich COVID-19 website that launched on March 13.

“Our overall goal for the website was to create a central location for our patients to gather information during this difficult time, and provide the community-at-large with resources, expert sources, system updates, and any additional information about COVID-19,” said Brand Marketing Specialist Elisa Lange. “We also want the community to know that we are open and prepared to continue providing quality care for any patient who needs us.”

The website includes the latest updates, available resources, frequently asked questions, and detailed videos from providers across our system, sharing specialty-specific information and general guidance about caring for at-risk patient populations during this pandemic. There also is information about Texas Children’s preparations and ongoing response to global events, and guidance for talking to children about COVID-19 and its impacts. The videos have been shared across all of our social media channels and continue to be sought by online visitors.

“One of the best ways to connect with our patients and families daily has been through social media,” said Christy Warring, director of External Communications and Digital Marketing. “It has been a lifeline for patients as our teams continue to post tips, resources and Texas Children’s updates. Followers are even able to reach out to us on on social media platforms with questions and comments.”

In addition to online information, we began sending COVID-19-related texts and emails to our patients to keep them updated about appointments, visitation at our facilities and eHealth options, like phone and video consults.

eHealth has been an important channel for patient care and communication during this time, but this strategy was already in motion to broaden access for our families. We have worked to expand and enhance eHealth services for several months to make it easier and more convenient for patients to connect with a Texas Children’s provider without leaving home. Given the current climate, it’s a welcome option for our families. Just in the month of March, we had more than 1,500 video visits and nearly 7,000 phone visits.

The system’s proactive outreach extends to Texas Children’s Health Plan members as well. We are promoting access to Anywhere Care, which allows members to receive care via video visits, and Health Plan members also receive updates via direct mail, social media, texts and email.

But one of the most effective ways to reach our members and their families has been through community partnerships. The Health Plan recently partnered with Aldine Independent School district and Gallery Furniture to disseminate information about COVID-19 and how to stop the spread of the disease.

“We are here to inform our members and providers about COVID-19 overall and doing all we can to make sure they are getting the most up-to-date information from us,” Warring said. “Our goal is to ensure they know how to get help through our call centers, telemedicine, and most importantly that we are here to help them if they need to call on us.”

On his blog this week, Mark Wallace shares an inspiring Brene Brown podcast and reminds us all to fill in the gap for each other in the days and weeks to come. Read more

March 31, 2020

If you think it’s tough to get a hold of toilet paper and hand sanitizer for your house of four, just imagine doing it for a health care system that sees over 4,000 children and women daily. Shoring up supplies for a critical population like ours is no small feat. It takes strong leadership to think ahead, secure partnerships and ensure we are prepared with the right supplies to continue to deliver care to patients who need us.

While the global coronavirus pandemic has created numerous challenges for health care – and for many other industries across the U.S. and around the world – Texas Children’s Supply Chain Team is helping us lead the charge to ensure all of our patient care facilities maintain adequate supply during COVID-19.

“We continue to support our patient care activities across the system, and with more incoming shipments on the way, we will add to our current supply in the days and weeks ahead,” said Texas Children’s Senior Vice President for Facilities Operations Bert Gumeringer. “We are able to meet this goal through collaborative relationships that we have built with our supply chain and community partners.”

Early on in the hospital’s response to COVID-19, Texas Children’s Supply Chain Team focused its efforts on increasing the organization’s inventory of supplies that are maintained in our warehouse – these items include masks, gowns and hand sanitizer – all of which are in short supply across the country.

In addition to collaborating with our traditional supply chain partners, Texas Children’s has been working diligently to acquire products outside of the hospital’s normal channels, which has proven beneficial:

  • Hand sanitizer:  Our supply chain is looking to the distilling industry to source hand sanitizer. We are working with two different distillers to provide us product. Our first shipment arrived on March 26. Texas Children’s sourced the materials to one of the distillers who used the materials to manufacture the hand sanitizer exclusively for our hospital.
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): We are working through very creative, safe alternatives to maintain appropriate supplies of PPE. For N95 masks, we have sourced product through the commercial construction market. This is not a traditional supply channel, but one the organization has tapped into. We continue to receive N95 masks through our normal supply channels, as well.
  • Protective masks for patients – We continue to work with our partners in the Texas Medical Center to shore up supplies. Houston Methodist Hospital donated 12,000 Teddy Bear masks for  patients who need to wear them, especially for our immunocompromised patient population.
  • Other supplies and products:  Our team has adopted an out of the box approach.  When the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show shut down, we moved quickly to acquire their hand sanitizer and paper products.  We are also acquiring hand sanitizer from Minute Maid Park, toilet paper from the Westin Hotel, paper towels from a janitorial service and disinfectant from Home Depot.

While significant progress has been made to ensure Texas Children’s has adequate supplies to support daily operations, engaging in good conservation practices is equally important.

“We encourage our employees and staff to continue to wash their hands frequently with soap and water to help conserve our supply of hand sanitizer,” Gumeringer said. “It’s also important to keep calm. While we’ve been through catastrophic hurricanes and storms, we will get through COVID-19 together as well.”

For many Texas Children’s employees, gone are the days of the morning commute.

Our efforts to fight COVID-19 through the practice of social distancing has required more than 1,000 staffers – and counting – to work from home. But what does it take to make this work?

Teresa Tonthat, assistant vice president for Information Services, says there are multiple factors to consider. Her department has spent the past few weeks ensuring that employees who are asked to work remotely can do so in a seamless way.

This includes assessing the current technologies, equipment requirements, and available network capacity to effectively support these employees; all while continuing to serve our patients and caregivers.

The good news is that we now have a well-defined plan in place.

Be prepared for bumps in the road, this is GLOBAL.

However, digital technology is never 100 percent available – even on the best days.

“As millions of people and organizations shift to remote working, our internet networks will be tested. We are experiencing a mass human behavior change across the globe,” Tonthat said. “The internet’s infrastructure will be strained and will be felt in the networks inside employee’s homes, and the internet services (i.e., Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon) that these networks rely on.”

Many remote workers will share the same internet connections throughout the day with household members. Household members could be using data-intensive applications and that surge in internet access could strain home networks.

Overall, as entities around the globe are moving to remote work environments to promote social distancing, local commercial and residential internet and telecommunication infrastructures (i.e., WebEx, Zoom, Teams, Video, etc.) are seeing increased traffic load. While our cloud telecommunication vendors are doing their best to increase capacity to mitigate availability issues, our local internet service providers may also experience issues with the high demand…
Just last week, virtual cloud platform vendors such as WebEx and Teams reported infrastructure capacity issues. Many organizations across the nation felt the disruption to virtual online meetings. And this is just the beginning.

How to stay as productive as possible
  • Call your internet service provider to make sure you have enough bandwidth to support your work responsibilities.
  • Consider all the people in your home who will need internet. Under normal conditions, a basic plan may do the trick. However, it’s important to keep in mind additional users such as other adults who may be working from home or children who may now be enrolled in online schooling.
  • Communicate with your manager if you are having trouble. You can’t work remotely if your internet isn’t working. Let your manager know if you are experiencing trouble so that arrangements can be made for you to come into the office and work in an way that adheres to social distancing guidelines.
  • Limit calls to the HelpDesk. Texas Children’s IS Help Desk can support system related connectivity issues, but cannot support issues related to your home internet provider.

For additional questions, please contact your manager or supervisor for support and guidance.

Elex Sanchez draws on his more than 25 years in the hospitality industry to bring the same level of customer service, attention to detail and visitor experience standards to our pediatric patients and their families.

Sanchez and his team start every shift with a huddle to discuss the day’s tasks and calisthenics to warm up for the physical demands of the job. Members of the team include floor care techs, unit support assistance, recycling techs, and lead techs who manage small, tactical groups like operating room (OR) technicians focused on daily terminal cleans in the OR. A terminal clean is a very deep, detailed cleaning process with special disinfectants requiring a certain amount of “kill time” to work properly.

Right now, as the spread of a global pandemic is knocking on our doors, the Environmental Services team is working hard to keep it at bay. This Texas Children’s team is well stocked and has proactively worked with vendors to secure a surplus of cleaning supplies, as an additional layer of readiness should it become difficulty to procure such items in the future.

Texas Children’s Environmental Services also employs five ultra violet light disinfection systems for ORs, isolation units or any other potentially contaminated areas in the hospital. First, the techs clean the room and then bring in the robot system to shine ultraviolet light from multiple, flexible arms. The whole process takes about 50 minutes. Texas Children’s has had five systems in place for about six months, and is in the process of procuring seven more units.

The team has also increased cleaning schedules and now completes 12 cleanings per day over three shifts in public spaces and restrooms, and also completes four to six cleaning rounds in lobbies and waiting rooms.

“We call ourselves ‘warriors for infection control.’ Essentially, we are infection control and our teams are on the front lines every day ensuring our patients and staff have a safe, sanitized and sparkling clean environment,” said Sanchez.

March 30, 2020

Texas Children’s greatest priority throughout our response to COVID-19 has been protecting the health and safety of our patients and our people. As part of this effort, we are working hard to provide our team members with resources and support for navigating this evolving situation both professionally and personally – including assistance with the child care needs that many of you may have at this time. To help you meet those needs, Texas Children’s has partnered with the YMCA of Greater Houston to provide temporary child care for our employees.

What is YMCA Child Care Services?

Beginning Thursday, March 26, several YMCA locations began providing child care services for the following age groups:

Children: Ages 5 to 12 Years

Program will run from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily
45 spots available per site on a first-come, first-served basis (see below for locations across the Houston area)
Various fun enrichment activities such as arts, crafts, games, literacy, STEA(rts)M program in partnership with the Children’s Museum and more
Lunch and afternoon snacks to be provided by the Houston Food Bank
If the Houston Food Bank is unable to provide meals, you will be notified in advance to provide necessary meals for each child daily
For additional information, please email daycamp@ymcahouston.org

Children: Ages 3 to 4 Years
Infants: Ages 12 Months to 35 Months
Care will be provided at YMCA sites designated for early care (see below for locations)
Program will run from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. daily
45 spots available per site on a first-come, first-served basis
For additional information, please email childrensacademy@ymcahouston.org

Who is eligible?

All Texas Children’s employees and our Baylor partners based at Texas Children’s can participate in this temporary child care option.

Where are the YMCA child care locations?

Below are a list of current YMCA child care locations. YMCA will continue to assess community needs and may potentially open new sites in the future.

Children: Ages 5 to 12 Years

Houston Texans YMCA
5202 Griggs Road
Houston, TX 77021
713.748.5405

D. Bradley McWilliams YMCA
19915 SH 249
Houston, TX 77070
281.469.1481

The Woodlands Family YMCA @ Shadowbend
6145 Shadowbend Place
The Woodlands, TX 77381
281.367.9622

Fort Bend Family YMCA
4433 Cartwright Road
Missouri City, TX 77459
281.499.9622

Vic Coppinger Family YMCA
2700 YMCA Drive
Pearland, TX 77581
281.485.6805

Weekley Family YMCA
7101 Stella Link Blvd
Houston, TX 77025
713.664.9622

Mark A. Chapman YMCA
1350 Main Street
Katy, TX 77494
281.665.1213

Lake Houston YMCA
2420 West Lake Houston Parkway Kingwood, TX 77339
281.360.2500
(Opens Monday, March 30)

Children: Ages 3 to 4 Years
Infants: Ages 12 Months to 35 Months

The Woodlands Family YMCA @ Shadowbend
6145 Shadowbend Place
The Woodlands, TX 77381
281.367.9622

Texas Medical Center YMCA
5614 H. Mark Crosswell, Jr.
Houston, TX 77021
713.747.2173

Wendel D. Ley Family YMCA
15055 Wallisville Rd.
Houston, TX 77049
281.458.7777

Houston Community College
3214 Austin St.
Houston, TX 77004
713.718.5437

D. Bradley McWilliams YMCA @ University Park
11144 Compaq Center W. Dr.
Houston, TX 77070
281.257.6600

Huntsville Family YMCA
2906 Old Houston Road.
Huntsville, TX 77340
936.295.8009

M.D. Anderson Family YMCA
705 Cavalcade
Houston, TX 77009
713.697.0648

How do I know my children will be safe?

To support a safe and hygienic environment, the YMCA has implemented the following measures:

  • YMCA personnel are trained, certified and have undergone background checks
  • No parents are permitted beyond the drop-off/pick-up areas
  • In keeping with CDC guidelines, all groupings will be limited to 10 or fewer individuals, and each location will host no more than 45 children at one time
  • Additional preventive measurements include daily temperature screenings, continuous cleaning and disinfection as well as no shared occupancy of rooms, in accordance to CDC guidelines

How much are the child care services?

Children

  • Ages 5 to 12 years: $30 per child per day
  • Ages 3 to 4 years: $40 per child per day

Infants

  • Ages 12 to 35 months: $50 per day

Please note you will make payment directly to the YMCA during the registration process.

How do I register?

To sign up, click here to select the location(s) you are interested in to view available spots. To complete your registration, you can either log into your current YMCA account, create a new one or check out as a guest.

When you check out as a guest, please select the Program Member option so you do not need to purchase a membership.

How do I check in on-site?

To verify you are a health care provider, please be prepared to show your Texas Children’s badge ID as proof of employment.

Questions?

Please email YMCA at daycamp@ymcahouston.org for school-age care or childrensacademy@ymcahouston.org for early care.