We just finished the second meeting of the Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response. At the 1st meeting (a couple of weeks ago) we outlined key priorities: 1) identifying an “Infectious Disease Treatment Center of Excellence” that would be proficient at treating emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola; 2) developing a parallel emergency medical [...]
On previous Blogs I’ve shared information about Community Integrated Paramedicine. One of the most promising opportunities for Community Paramedicine is in working with hospitals to prevent readmission of patients with diseases like diabetes, asthma or congestive heart failure. It’s also a great opportunity for EMS providers to provide some coaching on other prevention initiatives including [...]
Good question. Disasters and public health emergencies can stress health care systems to the breaking point and disrupt delivery of vital medical services. For example- hospitals and long-term care facilities may be without power; trained staff, ambulances, medical supplies, and beds could be in short supply; and alternate care facilities may need to be used. [...]
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 [...]
We had the pleasure of meeting with a delegation of health officials from the Republic of Korea (South Korea) this week to talk about Arizona’s Trauma System. The Director General of Public Health policy (Byung Guk Yang, MD) and his team met with our Emergency Medical Services and Trauma System team to talk about how we [...]
Last January 8th, the world was horrified by the events in Tucson Arizona. A mass shooting in a supermarket parking lot on a Saturday morning – 19 people shot, 6 died. As tragic as this event was, it could have been worse had the emergency medical care providers and trauma team not been prepared. It [...]
A trip to the emergency room with a sick or injured child is one of a parent’s worst nightmares, but it’s not uncommon. Last year in Arizona there were just over 400,000 emergency department visits by children ages 0–14. Not all hospital emergency rooms are equally equipped to provide care specific to children. Arizona is [...]
Our Emergency Medical Services team created a new guidance document last week to inform interested parties about the criteria we use when reviewing contracts between EMS providers and local jurisdictions. The document provides an overview of our goals relating to political subdivision contracts; our statutory and regulatory authority related to political subdivision contracts; the process and methods used by the Department for [...]
Medical Marijuana will be implemented in April, 2011. The coordination of tasks to ensure smooth and efficient implementation is a huge goal for 2011 and cuts across Bureau lines, involving many distinct portions of not only Public Health Preparedness but the Agency as a whole. Emergency Medical Services Within the Bureau of Emergency Services and [...]
Arizona uses a Certificate of Necessity (CON) system to regulate ground ambulance service in Arizona- and to make sure that every place in the State has adequate emergency medical services, including the frontier parts of AZ. The CON actually describes the geographic service area, level of service (advanced life support or basic life support), hours of operation, response [...]
