Hopefully you’ve seen our recent updates to our manual of policies and procedures (if you haven’t, please go take a look!). To be sure you’ve taken enough time to consider our new policies, we just wanted to touch base about how important they really are.

We know what you might be thinking. It’s easy to think all healthcare policies are the same, and that because you work with a couple different vendors, you’re covered. It’s even easy to think that because you’ve renewed your licensure, you’re good to go. You might even think that because policies have changed, you’ve done something wrong and are being punished or reprimanded.

The truth is this…an updated manual doesn’t mean we don’t trust you, and it doesn’t mean you’re not doing well.

As a onsite wellness professional, it’s easy to assume the most important part of every wellness event is the services you provide.

What’s equally important, however, is the participant consent forms. From a business and client relationship perspective, consent forms are one of the most important parts of any wellness event.

That’s why you won’t be paid until all of the consent forms from your event are safely returned to our corporate office in Omaha. We’re serious about our paperwork, and here’s why.

As health professionals, our flu season doesn’t necessarily line up with the public’s flu season. Our flu season could really be considered flu shot season. We’re glad to announce that the 2015 flu shot season is coming to a close, and wow, what a season it has been!

With your help, we provided 141,900 flu shots for employees across the country this year!

As a wellness professional, hopefully, you’re somewhat familiar with aseptic technique. This technique refers to the procedure for ensuring a sterile environment, which can prevent the spread of infection in a healthcare setting.

Each healthcare setting, however, can have its own individual procedures to ensure this sterility. At TotalWellness, we define an aseptic technique we’d like you to use as you fill syringes with flu vaccine.

Hopefully, you caught it in your contractor manual, but here is a brief reminder as we enter flu season.

Part of the consistent focus on TotalWellness event excellence involves familiarizing yourselves with the different types of flu shots that are on the market. In recent years, we’ve transitioned from administering one single type of flu shot to administering a variety of vaccines.

Checking Your Shipment

The most important thing to remember when it comes to the type of flu shot administered at your event is simply to double check. If you’re responsible for receiving the shipment for your event, open it up immediately after it arrives.

Flu season is just around the corner. That means, as a wellness professional, you’ll likely be dishing out some flu shots pretty soon.

Flu season can be crazy, and events can be incredibly fast paced. It’s important to remember that you’re dealing with potentially harmful tools in a hectic environment. Keep that in mind and try to avoid accidental need sticks as flu season ramps up.

Hopefully you've taken a look at our guidelines in the new contractor manual. If you haven't, one of the important pieces deals with HIPAA and patient privacy. Now, it’s still important to take a look at the manual, but we want to make sure you have a brief rundown on HIPAA in the meantime.

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It’s designed to help workers all over the country safely maintain their health insurance. Part of the act deals with the ability to transfer health insurance from one company to another if you get a new job.

We’ve been revising, re-writing, re-designing, editing and more, and we’re glad to share with you the new and improved contractor manual! The new manual is an excellent resource for a few different reasons.

1. It’s designed to match our branding.

We want you to understand what TotalWellness is all about. A huge part of that involves becoming comfortable with our branding. The new manual looks, feels and reads like most of our other content, so you’ll soon be an expert!

We’re gearing up for flu season. As more of our clients start to book their corporate flu clinics, you might see more events coming through your email.

That being said, are you ready for flu season?

Whether good or bad, the fact is that most people’s questions and concerns about flu shots are based on past experiences, rather than organized research. As you start to sign up for flu events, keep that in the back of your mind when interacting with participants.

The definition of health has evolved in the somewhat recent history. In order to understand what kind of health you’re promoting as an indepedent contractor with TotalWellness, it’s important to define what health means in your world.

Here at TotalWellness, we believe everyone is healthy. Yes, everyone. Each person has some healthy behavior in his or her life. We want to help employees everywhere find that behavior and build more just like it.

To see how we’ve come to this conclusion, check out the evolution of health. From “an absence of disease” to a formal WHO definition, health has definitely developed into a more inclusive and more customizable goal. Use that broad definition to work with event participants as they seek out the healthy habits in their lives.