Home Health & Hospice Week

Help workers overcome technology, language barriers.

You may want to take a page from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s vaccination playbook, as it passes the 10,500-doses-administered mark in its goal of vaccinating its staff.

VNSNY exec Andria Castellanos points to these factors that have helped the agency’s vaccination program thrive:

1. Avoiding tech confusion. Multiple things about forming a vaccination appointment scheduling team help encourage employees to get jabbed. For one, many aides “have challenges with technology,” so they would not be able to effectively utilize a web-based sign up system, Castellanos tells AAPC.
2. Eliminating language obstacles. Many aides also don’t speak English as a primary language, Castellanos shares. VNSNY made sure its vaccination appointment schedulers speak the primary languages of its aides — Spanish, Mandarin, Russian — and then matches schedulers with aides who speak those languages to facilitate communication.
3. Rewarding financially. Aides must often take time out of their work schedules or pay for child care to travel to the VNSNY location to receive their vaccinations. VNSNY is providing workers who have received both vaccinations with a $100 bonus to help recognize that, Castellanos says.
4. Assisting with access. VNSNY has a large service area — the five boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties. For some workers, the trip into Manhattan is a burden and they would rather get vaccinated closer to home or work. VNSNY helps those staff find vaccination sites and appointments, Castellanos shares.
5. Providing education. Since it began vaccinating, VNSNY has offered a weekly call where employees can ask questions of the agency’s medical officer physicians. VNSNY then transcribes those calls and makes the transcripts available on an internal work website, Castellanos says.
6. Passage of time. Perhaps as important as any of the agency’s efforts, the sheer passage of time has helped convince some employees who earlier opted out to now opt in. While employer-provided information and support is helpful, workers “really want to hear from their friends and members in their community,” Castellanos stresses. The more people they know who get vaccinated, the more they are willing to consider vaccination themselves. “A person who said ‘no’ two months ago may now say ‘yes,’” she says.