January 24, 2022

Home Care Association of New York and Iroquois Healthcare Association Continue to Train Workers on Covid-19 Testing

The Home Care Clinician Training for Covid-19 Testing grant has been extended to June 30th, 2022

The Home Care Association of New York (HCA) and the Iroquois Healthcare Association (IHA) are able to continue virtually training home care workers to conduct COVID-19 testing. This initiative is being made possible by a grant given to IHA and HCA by the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.

For the past two years IHA and HCA have delivered online training for home health registered nurses (RN’s) on COVID-19 testing procedures, to be conducted at home. This program allows the most vulnerable populations to be tested safely, away from large gathering spaces in a traditional health care setting.

An HCA survey conducted in 2020 with a sample of 300 home care providers statewide found that over 86% reported to not have staff trained in COVID testing. IHA and HCA have worked tirelessly to close that gap with accessible training available to all NYS home care workers.

The program uses expertise from professionals at Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS), a joint member of HCA and IHA, to assist with formatting, quality control and pre and post testing for the COVID Test Training course.

The training is accessed through the IHA Workforce Investment Organization Training platform enabled through HealthStream, the country’s leader in online healthcare education. HealthStream is user friendly and can be accessed on many devices including laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

This training is provided to home care agencies at no cost and is available to all NYS home care personnel whose practice permits testing for COVID-19.

During the past two years IHA along with HCA-NYS and MVHS have trained over 2,000 employees across 150 organizations. The program continuation promises more workers trained, and vulnerable populations protected.

To sign up- please visit https://hca-nys.org/testing.

“Training homecare workers to be able to test for COVID-19 is a top priority,” said HCA President and CEO Al Cardillo. “The object of this program is to get as many homecare workers trained as quickly as possible. We don’t want vulnerable populations to have to travel and risk exposure to get tested, it needs to come to them.”

“Because of our experience with past online training programs, we knew that this was the best way to train workers quickly and effectively,” said IHA President and CEO Gary J. Fitzgerald. “We are grateful to the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation for enabling us to make this program accessible to all NYS homecare workers.”

About the Home Care Association: For over 40 years, HCA has been a leading state and federal advocate for quality, community-based care. HCA represents hundreds of dedicated organizations and their thousands of home and community-based staff. They are a resource for information, providing policy and regulatory expertise, professional development, education and training opportunities to support you.

About the Iroquois Healthcare Association: IHA is a regional healthcare trade organization representing more than 50 hospitals and health systems, spanning over 28,000 square miles, across 32 counties of Upstate New York. IHA is the leading resource for facilities and professionals bringing quality health care to the region. IHA represents the unique needs of rural, small community safety-net providers to large, academic medical centers in Upstate New York’s urban areas through advocacy, education and information, cost-savings initiatives and innovative business solutions.