Preparedness – Page 73 – AZ Dept. of Health Services News

Items in the Preparedness category will cover everything from Emergency Medical Services to vaccination programs. This division at ADHS tracks contagious disease, coordinates emergency preparedness activity, licenses EMTs and Paramedics, regulates ambulance companies, authorizes special hospital designations like cardiac care center and Level IV trauma center, issues birth and death certificates, and tracks critical health data through various sources including hospital discharge information.

AZ Disease Detective Software Overhaul

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00January 14th, 2014|Preparedness|

Our statewide disease detectives (whose job it is to slow the spread of communicable diseases) need real-time electronic surveillance in order to get the job done. Our I.T. folks and the people in Public Health Preparedness have been working on an upgraded system to help them for the last several months- and our new Medical Electronic [...]

Sochi Public Health Tips

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00January 13th, 2014|Preparedness, Prevention|

I know that some of you out there are going to attend the Winter Olympics - so I put together the blog post below over the weekend for folks that might be going. Here goes in case you’re interested: Let’s start with the good news first- then the health tips… Sochi Games to be Smoke Free- Russians [...]

MERS Update

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00January 10th, 2014|Preparedness|

Back in the fall I mentioned the new SARS-like virus, MERS-CoV, which has been causing severe illness, and sometimes death, mainly in the Arabian Peninsula. Four months ago, 103 cases had been reported worldwide, about half of them fatal. Now, 177 cases have been reported, with 74 deaths. The cases are almost all located in [...]

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Influenza Season Officially Arrives

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:56-07:00January 3rd, 2014|Preparedness|

Flu season is here! Parts of the country (mostly in the south) have had more intense flu activity in the last few weeks, and 25 states reported widespread flu activity for the week ending December 28th. Meanwhile, in Arizona we are seeing an increase in the number of lab-confirmed flu cases reported to ADHS- but [...]

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Tweaking the EMS Cost Curve

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:56-07:00December 20th, 2013|Preparedness|

A couple of years ago I had our folks in the Bureau of EMS and Trauma System write a guidance document on what we believe is appropriate to include in ambulance contracts. We noticed that these contracts were getting very complicated and included a whole lot of stuff that was very expensive… but that didn’t have much to [...]

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Rural Metro Bankruptcy Confirmed by Court (but not yet effective)

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:57-07:00December 19th, 2013|Preparedness|

We received Rural Metro’s bankruptcy documents this week. The Delaware bankruptcy court confirmed the company’s reorganization- including the business plan and capital structure. The plan states that the company will be continuing all material contracts in AZ- which is good. They’ll officially emerge from Chapter 11 once its reorganization plan is declared “effective”… meaning that [...]

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Typhoon Haiyan & Public Health

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:59-07:00November 29th, 2013|Behavioral Health, General, Preparedness, Prevention|

Like conflict and wars, typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda) destroyed basic services for food, water, health care and shelter in the Central Philippines. This disaster was declared a “Level 3” Emergency by the UN, meaning there’s substantial impact on the health of people and it can’t be managed by a country or region alone. The [...]

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Rural Metro’s October Update

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:59-07:00November 21st, 2013|Preparedness|

We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider - Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they're meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times [...]

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This is An Exercise

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:49:59-07:00November 20th, 2013|Preparedness|

Arizona’s public health and healthcare system teamed up with the ADHS including our Bureau of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Arizona Division of Emergency Management last week in one of the largest preparedness exercises of the year. The objective was to test and build preparedness capabilities across the emergency management system in AZ. More than 3,000 [...]

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Valley Fever Awareness

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:50:00-07:00November 14th, 2013|General, Preparedness|

Guest blog by Jessica Rigler, Bureau of Epidemiology and Disease Control 11th Annual Valley Fever Awareness Week Valley Fever is a lung infection caused a fungus in the soil here in Arizona. People get it by breathing in Valley Fever spores in the air. Most people will have no symptoms or recover after a few [...]

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