Phoenix, Arizona – The Maricopa Medical Center has been chosen as the official hub for infectious disease training to treat illnesses that affect the county like the fatal Ebola.
The designation will then allow Maricopa Integrated Health System (MIHS) to treat confirmed communicable diseases like Ebola not only specifically in the county but its nearby areas as well.
In Arizona, there is confirmed or even suspected person with risk of Ebola checked in an urgent care clinic yet but the state’s public health officials said that they are making preventive steps even with the remote possibility of someone with Ebola arriving in Arizona.
The Chairman of the Maricopa Integrated Health System, Terence McMahon, said that the group has been preparing for the possibility of Ebola patients arriving in Arizona for months already. He said that even if the likelihood of seeing someone infected with Ebola is remote, MIHS is prepared to address the health needs of the residents of the state as well as of the health care workers.
The Maricopa County Special Health Care District Board of Directors’ agreement of the designation is just the first step. The details of the arrangement will be talked about by the state and county public officials with the Maricopa Integrated Health System people over the next few weeks as stated in an official statement.
The Maricopa Medical Center is a regional Level I Trauma Center with the Arizona Burn Center included in it. Its emergency preparedness team has established an infectious disease response plan which includes ways of managing an Ebola case that involve the extensive training of the Maricopa Integrate Health System staff helping out. The emergency preparedness team is by the way led by Keith Fehr.
One of the many programs of MIHS is the Telemedicine program which was formed after the bombing of 9/11 which links to different hospitals in Arizona as well as the Southwest. Its network allows medical consultation to patients who are seriously ill with infectious diseases while at the same time reducing the contact of the urgent care workers to the disease.
According to the medical director of Disease Control at Maricopa County Public Health Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, the designation of Maricopa Medical Center as the center for infectious diseases response training will not cut the need for urgent care clinics and hospitals in Arizona to quickly recognize, isolate, diagnose and treat infected patients.
Training at the Maricopa Medical Center for urgent care near me is already underway according to the release.
