Ice cream social
As the institution with the largest employee participation in the recent Boston Bike-to-Work Day Corporate Challenge, the MGH will receive a free ice cream social, compliments of Ben and Jerry's, June 16, 11 am to 2 pm, on the Bulfinch Lawn. All employees are invited to the party, thanks to the more than 180 riders from the MGH who biked to work for the citywide event in May.

Chelsea hosts bike safety event
MGH Chelsea HealthCare Center will help children learn about bicycle safety this summer at its second annual "Safety on Wheels" education event June 19, noon to 3 pm, in the health center parking lot, 151 Everett Ave. Community members are welcome and encouraged to bring their bikes and helmets for safety checks. The rain date will be July 10. For more information, call 887-3504.

Breastfeeding workshop
The Employee Assistance Program will sponsor a parenting workshop entitled "Working and Breastfeeding: Returning to Work and Maintaining Your Milk Supply" June 15, 1 to 2 pm, in VBK, room 401. Germaine Lambergs, RN, a lactation consultant at the MGH, will give expectant parents and nursing mothers the basics about breast pumps, reverse feeding and solutions to potential problems. For more information, call 6-6976.

Legal issues of aging parents
The Employee Assistance Program will present "Caring For Your Aging Parents – Legal Issues," the last of the season's Work/Life Seminar Series June 17, noon to 1 pm, in the Wellman Conference Room. The seminar will discuss various legal issues adult children may face caring for their parents — including guardianship, conservatorship and power of attorney. A repeat presentation — which will be videoconferenced to MGH Charlestown HealthCare Center — will take place June 24, at noon, at BWH. For more information, call 6-6976.

IHP graduate nursing open house
The Graduate Program in Nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions invites nurses and others with bachelor's degrees in any field to an open house June 14, 4:30 to 6 pm, 101 Merrimac St., fourth floor. Learn about the new acute care nurse practitioner master's program as well as other specialties in adult, child and family primary care, women's health, gerontology, psychiatric/mental health and HIV care. Full-time MGH and Partners-affiliated employees may take their first course at half-price tuition. For more information, call 6-3485.

MGH/Timilty Partnership
Bike for mentoring
Join other MGHers as they bike or stroll along the Charles River for the One-to-One Challenge: Ride for Mentoring, June 27, starting anytime between 9 and 11 am, at Artesani Park in Allston. The MGH/Timilty Partnership, which coordinates mentoring programs between MGH employees and students at the James P. Timilty Middle School in Roxbury, is organizing a team to participate in the ride. Partners also is a sponsor of the event. Proceeds will benefit statewide mentoring programs like the MGH/Timilty Science Fair Mentoring Program. To ride on the MGH/Timilty team or to help sponsor or recruit other riders, call 4-3210.

SummerWorks program
The MGH/Timilty Partnership seeks departments to host students for SummerWorks, a part-time career exploration/summer employment program that offers eighth graders who recently graduated from the Timilty Middle School an opportunity to work at the MGH. The program will hire 10 students, age 14 or older, to work part time, July 12 to Aug. 28, Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 2:30 pm. Students will be matched with work sites throughout the hospital. Departments interested in hosting students should call the Partnership at 4-3210.

Patcom system to be updated
Patient Access Services (Admitting and Outpatient Services), Information Systems, Health Information Management and Patient Accounts have been working together to replace the current patient admitting, coding and billing system – Patcom – with a new Year 2000 (Y2K)-compliant version. The conversion will take place from Friday evening June 11 to Sunday morning June 13. During this time, the system will be unavailable to the many employees who use it throughout the hospital, including those on patient care units and those in Dietetics, the Pharmacy, Communications and Case Management. Patient lists accessed through PCIS also will not be available to physicians.

Although the more than 1,700 Patcom users will notice only minimal functional changes once the conversion is complete, the new Y2K version, PatcomPlus, will provide faster processing time and delivery for the hundreds of operational and management reports it produces each day.

Patcom Working Group representatives already have contacted the systems' primary user groups to provide updated information about the new login process and other functional changes. Those who have not been contacted may e-mail Gerald Van Nostrand of Information Systems at gvannostrand@partners.org or contact Judy Kirim of Patient Access Services by calling 4-5837 or paging her at 3-5498.