December - 20208GOVERNMENT CIO OUTLOOKIN MYOPINIONTed Selby, Emergency Medical Services Director, Solano CountyByt all started when my phone rang that fateful January day; the voice on the other end of the line said, "Ted, are you ready for this?" It was Kevin, the local representative of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department's Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.; all I could do was clear my throat and say, "I'm ready..." It was then that I learned that due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, employees of the U.S. Department of State and their families working abroad in the Wuhan China area would be repatriated to Travis Air Force Base in Solano County where I have the honor of serving as the county's Emergency Medical Services Director. The issue I was faced with was how medical transport and treatment would be handled since the repatriates would be quarantined on base, and the base hospital was not authorized to provide any services or support for the mission. It's important to note the only hospital in Fairfield, other than the Base hospital, is NorthBay Medical Center, a local hospital affiliated with the Mayo Clinic. I must commend them for the extraordinary job they did in taking care of repatriates from Asia and later from international waters right off the coast of California; more about that later.It's also important to point out that Kaiser Permanente is the healthcare home for about two-thirds of our insured population, making it the predominant provider of medical treatment and care in Solano county. As such, Kaiser Foundation Hospital, Vacaville, is the county's designated Level II Trauma Center and Multi-Casualty Incident (MCI) Base Station. I began coordinating planning calls, a few days before the mission was to commence, with representatives from Kaiser and the other local hospitals, public health, ambulance providers, and the federal government. Together we agreed to use a modified version of our jurisdiction's MCI Plan, which is heavily dependent upon ReddiNet (a secure health information IA SUCCESSFUL QUARANTINE MISSION AMID GLOBAL PANDEMIC
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