Preparedness – Page 36 – AZ Dept. of Health Services Director's Blog

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 Trauma System Continues to Mature

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:46-07:00 March 17th, 2014|Preparedness|

I've often written about the importance of a mature trauma system and how it's important to the rural/tribal areas of Arizona for better access to care for injured patients. Since my last blog on trauma, we've welcomed Banner Del Webb Medical Center, Payson Regional Medical Center, Mt. Graham Medical Center, and Yavapai Regional Medical Center as Level [...]

Comments Off

AZ EMS Jobs for Veterans

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:50-07:00 February 18th, 2014|Preparedness|

Around the Country, State Emergency Medical Services offices are looking for ways to help returning Veterans with medical experience find employment in the EMS industry. We’ll be making it a priority in 2014 to engage more Veterans with EMS experience to use their skills in Arizona’s progressive EMS and Trauma System. We have a couple [...]

Comments Off

AZ Aces Latest CDC Public Health Preparedness Report Card

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:53-07:00 February 3rd, 2014|Preparedness|

Arizona continues to score high marks on preparedness according to a CDC report released this week. We got a perfect score this year for biological laboratory testing, and we’ve kept our excellent performance measures for incident management, public information, and medical countermeasures. Our response times for activating our emergency operation center have been well above [...]

What’s the Medical “Standard of Care” in an Emergency?

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:54-07:00 January 23rd, 2014|Preparedness|

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. [...]

Special Needs Emergency Preparedness Manual

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:54-07:00 January 22nd, 2014|Preparedness|

The first link in the chain of survival during a public health disaster is people taking responsibility for their own family’s safety. Being prepared at home is the first line of defense. Families that have family members with special needs sometimes need to have more detailed plans to ensure that their needs will be met [...]

Comments Off

AZ Disease Detective Software Overhaul

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00 January 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| 2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00 January 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| 2017-02-10T09:49:55-07:00 January 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 [...]

Comments Off

Influenza Season Officially Arrives

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:56-07:00 January 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 [...]

Comments Off

Tweaking the EMS Cost Curve

By Will Humble| 2017-02-10T09:49:56-07:00 December 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 [...]

Comments Off

Previous 34 35 36 37 38 Next

ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES

Health and Wellness for All Arizonans

ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES

Health and Wellness for All Arizonans

ARIZONA DEPARTMENT
OF HEALTH SERVICES