I often write about the benefits and leverage we can achieve for our public health goals by partnering with external organizations and Stakeholders, but sometimes the collaborative initiatives are with ourself. Our Medical Facility Licensing and Emergency Preparedness teams have been working with our licensed facilities to figure out what they’d need in terms of regulatory relief if there’s a public health emergency.
For example, the question of granting and getting regulatory relief in a public health emergency is more complicated that it sounds right off the bat, because there are a host of federal (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) and state rules and regulations that apply (here’s info on the H1N1 declaration). Kathy McCanna and Connie Belden from Licensing put together a terrific PowerPoint on this subject to help providers to incorporate waiver requests into their disaster plans. They presented at the January Alternate Care System conference for the Central Region (Maricopa, Gila and Pinal Counties) and will be presenting the material next month at the Western Region conference. Thanks for going above and beyond.
