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Contact Tracer Process

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Objective

Students will assist in developing a standard operating procedure for COVID-19 contract tracing for Penn State Health. Students will be tasked with remotely interviewing COVID cases and their direct contacts to ensure that proper quarantine measures are taken.

Deliverable

Continuously updated RedCap database of all COVID-19 cases and their contacts.

Execution Plan

  1. Initially 10 Medical students (seven from Hershey, three from UP) will be trained to talk to cases and contacts by HMC faculty using phone scripts integrated into RedCap with emphasis on maintaining patient confidentiality.
  2. Students with by divided in to a case team and a contact team.
  3. When a new COVID case arises, HMC faculty will inform the on-call student from the case team based on a pre-determined schedule. This student on the case team will remotely interview the case through the Penn State Health operator to maintain privacy. The contacts of the case are recorded into RedCap.
  4. Contacts will be notified by students on the contact team of their possible exposure and the importance of self-quarantine. The contact will be followed for 14 days via an automated RedCap survey or by phone call.
  5. If new symptoms arise, the contact will be directed to the HMC testing center after review and approval by HMC Contact Tracing faculty (Dr. Sciammana)

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Operations

Maintain schedules, standard operating procedures and address workflow issues between all teams

​Student Leads: Natasha Sood, Kaleb Bogale

Oversight

Manage new cases and contacts, distribution of those cases and contacts to callers, key performance indicators and data flow.

Student Leads: Daniela Medina, Nate Michalak, Paul Nguyen

Interventions

Curation of resources and recommendations for cases and their contacts, optimization of caller script to identify and address needs of cases and contacts to incentivize quarantining.

Student ​Lead: Lindsay Buzelli

Social Resources

Finding resources on food, quarantining, mental health to share with contacts and cases. Coordinating with HMCs social worker department.

Student ​Leads: Marisa Giglio, Rachel Dishong

Students: Kaleb Bogale, Natasha Sood, Daniela Medina, Nate Michalak, Jason Spicher, Casey Ryan, Catherine Smiley, Katelyn Edel

Onboarding

Train new medical and nurse practitioner students in standard operating procedures, REDcap protocols to prepare them to join the active Case/Contact caller roster.

​Student Leads: Nikki Legro, Mary Connolley

Quality Assurance

Sit in on callers’ conversations with contacts and cases to ensure quality of client experience, standardize practices among callers, and optimize contact gathering and incentivizing quarantining.​

Student Leads: Katelyn Edel, Patti Bickley

Plasma Donor recruitment

Create standard operating procedures for reaching cases recovering from COVID-19 eligible to donate plasma to be used to treat those with active infection.

​Student Leads: Nils Wendel, Alyssa Scott, Shannon Nicosia

Research

Student Leads: Kalen Kearcher, Joshua Blaker, Jim Marks