SLT Updates

LifeLong Staff,

The Revisioning/Reimagining/Re-energizing The Diversity (RTD) Committee held the third of four meetings in-person in January. Formed to envision the future for an ongoing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging (DEIB) Committee, the effort launched October 2022 and by the end of February the group will have met 4 times, with each session facilitated by Diane Johnson, PhD, Founder and CEO of Mmapeu Consulting, Lifelong Medical Care’s DEI consultant. 

The face-to-face meetings have been important to create the blueprint, realistic timelines, and processes that will lead to establishing an ongoing a DEIB committee in 2023. The committee will make a set of recommendations that will suggest concrete plans to further DEIB work for significant cultural impact within LifeLong. The goal of the ongoing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Committee will be to serve as the organizational liaison, advisory council, feedback loop, and thought partner to Lifelong leadership that continues the evolution of this important work.  

This initial group, the RTD, is made up of 20 members from various departments and roles across LifeLong. After the final meeting in February, there will be a nominations and selection process for LifeLong’s permanent, standing committee.  The members of the new DEIB Committee will have 12 to18-month terms and offer guidance, thought leadership, and accountability for organizational and departmental DEIB work.  

Another exciting part of the ongoing DEIB efforts is the recruiting and hiring of a Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. This position will champion and support the mission, vision, and goals outlined by the RTD committee, working in tandem with Lifelong leadership and the newly formed DEIB Committee. The Director of DEIB will ensure diverse perspectives and opinions are incorporated, current and future priorities are identified, and organizational assessments will be conducted. This leads to collaboratively creating protocols and procedures, recommendations for specific activities, creation of success metrics, and crafting a DEIB workplan that is shared across and includes engagement of the entire organization.

We look forward to what is being created as LifeLong continues its diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging journey.

The RTD Committee

Dear LifeLong Staff,

We are excited to announce that we are officially going live with Coupa as of Tuesday, January 17th!

As mentioned, we are taking a phased approach to our Coupa project. On January 17th, all procurement users will be able to access the system to place and approve orders and a smaller group of expense users will be going live (Facilities, Street Medicine, and BSP). The rest of the expense users will be going live in the coming weeks.

Coupa will be our web-based system for creating purchase requisitions, initiating approvals, creating purchase orders to suppliers, receiving invoices from suppliers for payment, and submitting expense reports. Coupa will be replacing Bellwether as our purchasing system and Bellwether will not be available to place new requisitions after January 16th.

Please expect more emails from me (and others) as we prepare for our go-live date. We will be sending out Coupa Guides, Coupa PowerPoints, hosting “Coupa office hours” 2x a week, and Q&A sessions during the week of January 30^th.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our project lead Coupa consultant Jenn Irving at jirving@lifelongmedical.org or please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and support.

Best,

Brent

We have a natural tendency at the end of the year to look back on what we’ve accomplished. The same is true for LifeLong as an organization. LifeLong’s 2022 Annual Report is about to hit the presses, this year with much more interactivity than ever before.

The theme this year is Reflections of Our Community, and the report is chockfull of stories about the people who make this organization the respected provider to underserved communities that it is. For 2022, we’ve emphasized the many ways our staff reflects the people we serve.

As CEO David B. Vliet’s message says, “Our staff truly understand the challenges our clients and patients face because they’ve faced some of the same obstacles themselves. Their stories have inspired me. I hope they inspire you too.”

We are also looking forward to graduating our first class of Family Medicine Residents in June 2023, breaking ground on the new Howard Daniel East Oakland Health Center, and opening the new Berkeley Trust Health Center this spring.

The LifeLong Development & Communications team wishes you all happy and healthy holidays.

Click here for a peek of the 2022 Annual Report.

Contra Costa and Alameda Counties have moved into “Medium” community level (CDC Community Levels).  In accordance with  LifeLong Covid-19 Infection Control Protocol the following measures are bing re-instated:

• Masks to be worn at all times in shared spaces.
• Eating must occur in designated areas or outdoors.

Full All Staff Letter from Dr. Michael Stacey, Chief Medical Officer follows.

Dear LifeLong Staff,   Gathering with co-workers, friends and family is an important part of celebrating end of year holidays and traditions.  I want to encourage you to find ways to connect with your friends and colleagues, while also reminding everyone to take precautions to limit the spread of COVID, Influenza and RSV.  During this week many LifeLong locations will be taking a little time out of the work day to share food and socialize, unfortunately we are also seeing increasing rates of COVID.  In order to make these gatherings as safe as possible, please consider the following measures as of December 14, 2022:   – Wear masks while not eating. – If possible, move outdoors. People could collect food while masked indoors and then step outside to eat and socialize. – Make sure that indoor space being used for gathering has HEPA filters running. – Please do not come to work, or attend a social gathering if you have any symptoms that you think may be related to COVID, Influenza or RSV. – Wash your hands frequently.   While designated holiday gatherings will still be allowed as an exception, with the above recommended precautions, please be aware that Contra Costa and Alameda Counties have moved into “Medium” community level (CDC Community Levels).  In accordance with  LifeLong Covid-19 Infection Control Protocol the following measures are bing re-instated:   Masks to be worn at all times in shared spaces. Eating must occur in designated areas or outdoors.   While it may not provide protection for this week’s activities, I strongly encourage everyone to get the bivalent COVID booster AND a flu shot, if you have not already done so.   Thank you for all you do and I wish you happiness in whatever way you celebrate this season,  Michael

LifeLong Staff,

The temporary Re-envisioning The DEIB (RTD) committee formed to envision future for the DEIB Committee held their second meeting in person last week led by Diane Johnson, PhD, Founder and CEO of Mmapeu Consulting. The face-to-face meeting was engaging and purposeful. The committee looks forward to having a solid, cohesive work plan ready in January to devise a structural and cultural impact within LifeLong.

The committee is made up of 20 members from various departments and roles across LifeLong. We are excited for the next two meetings to Re-launch, Re-frame, and Re-envision on the next steps for DEIB. In January, applications will be open to join the permanent DEIB Committee.

The RTD Committee

Dear LifeLong Team,

As promised, you all now have access to the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for each of the Administrative Ops departments.  Links to the SLAs for Procurement, HR, IT and Facilities are below.

As a reminder, our Analytics team was not able to create separate departmental SLA tracking dashboards using the data from SolarWinds, (our current service ticketing software platform). SolarWinds works well for LifeLong on the front end, but not so well on the back end. The data that we can retrieve doesn’t allow for clean separation of data from each department. I want to thank Yui and her team for putting in a lot of hours trying everything they could think of to solve this issue, to no avail.  Noah, David, Yui, and I are engaging other service ticketing vendors that will be able to provide clear data separation reports on each department’s Key Performance Measure (KPI) based on each department’s specific SLA. We have a vendor in mind, but I will keep quiet on the name until a final platform has been selected.

Even though we aren’t yet able to pull reports to monitor our success, each Administrative Operations Department Director and their team have committed to internally managing their tickets based on the SLAs detailed in the document for their respective departments below.

We are very excited to launch this new effort to assure that we are meeting our goals and providing excellent service.  And this is just the beginning! These SLAs are living documents that will continue to be developed to better service you all. The SLAs will be housed in our Compliance Department and handled like a standard policy that must be reviewed, updated, and approved by the department head and executive lead annually.  We will be looking for ongoing input from you to continue to refine these agreements in the future.

Thank you to Kelly Terrell, who co-chaired this project with me, as well as Noah, RoseMarie, and Tony, who led their teams in creating their respective department’s final SLA document.  They truly approached this work with the goal of providing improved customer service to you all.

Finally, thanks to all of you, our customers, for your patience and dedication in working with us to create these service level agreements. Our goal is to give you high quality and responsive service so you can do what you do best – provide high quality care and services for our community.    

More to come.

Thank you all.

DL

Please hold the ctrl key and click on link to access:  

 Information Technology (IT) ) -SLA-Final -December-2022

 Procurement Operations -SLA-Final -December-2022

 Human Resources (HR) -SLA-Final -December-2022

 Facilities Operations -SLA-Final-December-2022