WAC 246-101 requires that healthcare providers and laboratories report specific disease conditions to their local public health jurisdictions. These disease conditions call for an immediate response from public health and thus necessitate the ability of the Communicable Disease program to respond to calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Although the CD staff can respond to these calls during normal business hours, an on-call program has been established to provide adequate staffing in the event of a phone call during non-business hours.
The original on-call MOU with WSNA was agreed and signed in September 2015. The Communicable Disease Public Health Nurses were assigned to the weekly on-call responsibilities. During negotiations for the 1/1/2018 contract cycle, management and WSNA agreed to add Communicable Disease management staff to be assigned to the weekly on-call responsibilities in rotation with the three Communicable Disease public health nurses. Currently the Communicable Disease Supervisor, Maternal Child Health Supervisor, and Prevention Services Assistant Director are included in the rotation for a total of six District staff.
In January of this year, Human Resources worked with WSNA, proposing to add the Epidemiologist 2 employees who are represented by PROTEC17–APHU. WSNA took the MOU to vote, and it passed in April. Human Resources worked with PROTEC17 to create the attached MOU to reflect the same language that’s included in the WSNA MOU.
On-call staff are paid $175/week, in addition to their normal work hours, plus any time spent on the call. The rotation starts Wednesday 5 p.m. and ends the following Wednesday at 8 a.m.