Pandemic Influenza Plan - Questar III

Section 3: Healthcare Planning and Emergency Response
The agency’s plan should include working with home health agencies in neighboring
counties and local nursing homes to temporarily admit patients to those providers. LHDs
may need to work closely with their NYSDOH Regional Office to secure support for
some of their public health activities (e.g., Points of Dispensing) so that LHD staff may
be freed to care for their most fragile home care patients.
The following concepts should be reviewed and reinforced with staff:
• Information on disease prevention strategies
• Infection control techniques
• Identification of symptoms to promote early detection and minimize the spread of
disease
The HHA should make arrangements to provide or arrange for immunization of their
patients and staff.
Many agencies have tele-medicine equipment that could be used to monitor patients
while limiting face-to-face contact. This technology could be extremely valuable during
a pandemic.
D. Primary Care Providers (Community Health Centers, Physician Offices,
Urgent Care Centers)
During a pandemic, the effective delivery of outpatient services and the use of primary
care facilities as additional triage sites can be critical. The important functions that
primary care facilities/providers should incorporate into their planning are:
• Collaboration with hospital and LHDs to establish telephone hotlines to provide
advice to the public on whether to stay home or to seek care. This may help
reduce the volume of “worried well.”
• Serve as a referral point for hospital triage sites if it is determined that patients
can be managed on the outpatient basis.
• Serve as additional triage (and treatment) sites to provide patients an alternative to
presenting at the hospital, thus easing the burden on hospital EDs.
Key planning considerations for these settings are:
• development of triage and treatment procedures that minimize the risk of disease
transmission (e.g., physical separation of patients, “sick call” hours).
• review and reinforcement of the following concepts with staff:
• infection control practices;
• enhancement of triage and treatment capacity through increase hours
of operation and the use of volunteers.
• collaboration with hospitals and LHDs on public service messages that announce
facility availability and hours of operation.
February 7, 2006 3-18