“Defense health officials are rallying to the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response by contributing both medical and technical resources, personnel and capabilities.”
“DHA has established a Crisis Action Team to better meet the exponentially growing national demand for treatment and health resources, Defense Health Agency Director Gen. Ronald Place said in an agency address. The team is based at the DHA headquarters in northern Virginia and has personnel ready night and day, seven days a week, to address patient concerns and care, monitor blood supplies and share military health equipment and capabilities, Place said.”
“Place explained other areas of support that the military health system is expanding, including providing more patient bed space, examining appropriate trade-offs in shifting resources from one need to another, assisting Americans with self-screening and general testing of patients…”Technological Response and Aid
“Amid the broader ‘gap-filler’ response that military medical officials and personnel are acting on, the DHA Solution Delivery Division is also supporting COVID-19 countermeasures ramping up national detection capabilities and using web and mobile technologies to monitor MTF bed occupancy statuses in real time.”
“SDD updated its Clinical Support Program Management Office’s Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics application, otherwise known as ESSENCE, and the AHLTA military electronic health record to increase the military health system’s ability to globally monitor for COVID-19 threats and outbreaks.”
“SDD reported In a March newsletter that it created a query tab in ESSENCE for the novel coronavirus, providing more updates and information to the COVID-19 query that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed. More specifically, SDD’s query tab includes International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems codes, known as ICD-10, and critical information related to the pandemic.”
“The SDD EHR Core PMO also worked with the SDD Health Informatics team to update the AHLTA Tri-Service Workflow primary care forms to include COVID-19 travel screening information. These forms can help identify potentially infected individuals so that officials can further evaluate or isolate them in accordance with CDC guidance…” Read the full article here.
Source: How Defense Health is Aiding National COVID-19 Response – By Melissa Harris, March 25, 2020. GovernmentCIO.
