Preparedness

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.

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 [...]

Bringing Primary Care to Rural AZ

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:50:01-07:00November 5th, 2013|Preparedness|

Getting enough primary care providers into rural areas is a struggle everywhere- and AZ is no exception. Each state needs to have a coordinated and creative strategy to the get these critical access to care resources to the right places. We have a few strategies. One is the J1 Visa Program. Each year, we provide (through the [...]

Disease Follows Conflict

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:50:01-07:00November 1st, 2013|Preparedness, Prevention|

Throughout human history, war and political unrest have been associated with the spread of disease, often called the “third army”. During the Napoleonic wars, 8 times more people in the British army died from disease than from battle wounds. In our Civil War, 66% of the 660,000 deaths among soldiers were caused by pneumonia, typhoid, [...]

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Trauma System Part 3

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:50:03-07:00October 30th, 2013|Preparedness|

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the basics of evaluating a trauma system and last week I posted about over & under triage. This week is about a tool we use to measure whether we’re striking the right balance- the “Z Statistic”. Back in 1990, there was a famous study published (Major Trauma [...]

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Another Reason to Get a Flu Shot

By Will Humble|2017-02-10T09:50:03-07:00October 30th, 2013|Preparedness|

Investigators of a new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association discovered another reason that some people may benefit from getting the flu shot. The study found that getting an annual flu vaccine puts the person at lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or death [...]

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