DEPARTMENT: Health
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Dawn Emerick, Ed.D, Director
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT: A briefing providing updates to the City’s Health Transition Team’s Implementation Plan
SUMMARY:
Metro Health, San Antonio Fire Department (SAFD) and Government and Public Affairs (GPA) will provide a briefing with detailed progress of the Health Transition Team’s Implementation Plan including the budget and the comprehensive communication pieces.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Since January 23, Metro Health and SAFD, alongside other community partners like the South Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC), have been working to respond to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. They worked in concert with the CDC, Health and Human Services (HHS), and the office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to provide evacuee and traveler response on JBSA-Lackland and later to provide direct response to the emerging pandemic situation in San Antonio.
The Mayor and County Judge as a part of their response to the pandemic situation created a Health Transition Team whose primary goal was to outline guidance around warning and progress indicators to assist City and County leadership as they formulated guidance for reopening San Antonio and Bexar County.
Metro Health and SAFD have taken that guidance and created an implementation plan to operationalize the guidance provided by the Health Transition Team. The Health Transition Team (HTT) Implementation plan is built to provide the indicators behind decision making, the actions proposed to expand capacity and ability to analyze, and the plans for assuring the general public that the decisions made are backed up by the data analyzed.
The entire plan will be provided oversight by the COVID-19 Community Response Coalition led by co-chairs, Dr. Dawn Emerick and Dr. Barbara Taylor. The Coalition is made up of 5 distinct workgroups contributing in areas outlined in three phases: Watch (Indicator Workgroup); Expand (Testing & Lab Reporting Workgroup and Contact Tracing Workgroup); and Assure (Enforcement & Education Workgroup and Policy & Health Alerts Workgroup).
Metro Health will utilize $39.5M in Federal Funds available through the CARES Coronavirus Relief fund to execute the Health Transition Team (HTT) Implementation Plan. The budget consists of ten (10) components to include Testing; Education, Media Relations, Data Management; Contact Tracing; Case Investigations; COVID and Provider Hotlines, and Provider Relations; Project Management; Research; Congregate Settings; Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Support; and Community Health & Prevention.
The budget will fund a total of 89 temp positions to support Testing; Education, Media Relations and Data Management; Case Investigations; Provider Hotline and Provider Relations; Project Management; Congregate Settings; Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Support; and Community Health & Prevention for a total of $5.6M. Metro Health will execute the following contracts:
• CPL in the amount of $28.5M to conduct 1,250 tests per day;
• UT Health School of Public Health in the amount of $2.0M to hire up to 175 tracers to conduct contact tracing;
• Health Collaborative for a total of $1.0M to invest in research projects such as COVID-19 Community-Partners Participatory Research (CPPR), Evaluation of existing COVID-19 interventions, and Population Epidemiology Research;
• Community Messaging for a total of $500k; and
• Transition the Main COVID Hotline to 311.
Metro Health also allocated $750,000 in funding for infrastructure to automate manual systems within the Epi Program; integration of systems to facilitate transfer of data; and purchase of a system to track all deliverables outlined in the HTT Implementation Plan.
The SAFD will utilize the $15M in Federal Funds available through the CARES Coronavirus Relief fund to expand the response capabilities for the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic. This mission includes working in conjunction with Metro Health and GPA to ensure that testing and other programs are available throughout the community, ensuring the emergency response capabilities of the Fire Department are prepared for the continued response to the COVID-19 cases, and keeping all City of San Antonio employees safe through the purchase and distribution of Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE).
For testing and assessments SAFD personnel will be working with Metro Health at Walk-up sites, completing testing missions designated by gubernatorial orders, and any individual or congregate setting assessments or testing as deemed by Metro Health and SAFD. A budget of $5 million is included in this budget for Overtime Expenses associated with the personnel assigned to this program. The SAFD has begun the purchase of $2,159,000 worth of vehicles and equipment to create testing mobile units which are already being used daily by the SAFD to perform assessments and testing missions.
To enhance the SAFD emergency response capabilities, the department will purchase $5,517,835 of equipment for first response vehicles and the MIH program. This equipment will be used for emergency response as well as in a MIH program to assess patients at first contact and after release from the hospital. An additional $226,498 will be added to the UTHSCSA contract to include a new Assistant Medical Director and Infection Control Nurse to expand system capacity. Decontamination Equipment for SAFD facilities and units have begun to be purchased as well as Medications that will be used by MIH to treat Covid-19 patients at a cost of $108,426.
The SAFD will purchase $1,854,770 of medical PPE for the department. The future goal would be to maintain a medical PPE cache for the City. This would require the establishment of a procurement, storage and distribution system for all COSA departments, operated by the SAFD. Centralizing this responsibility will establish consistency and accountability for the medical PPE inventory management needs for the City. The budget includes $115,000 for temporary positions to manage inventory.
Metro Health and SAFD are working very closely with the Government & Public Affairs (GPA) department to develop a comprehensive Communications Plan as outlined in the plan. This communications plan is intended to guide the communications strategies and community outreach of the City of San Antonio, as the HTT Implementation Plan is executed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the reopening of the community and economy in San Antonio and Bexar County. The communications plan establishes objectives for each pillar of the HTT Implementation Plan, identifies target audiences, proposes a messaging platform, and summarizes the strategies and tactics recommended for accomplishing the aforementioned objectives.
The overarching goal of the communications plan is to provide critical information - utilizing an equity approach that meets residents where they are - to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and educate residents and business to protect themselves, their families and their customers. As is true with the HTT Implementation Plan itself, successfully executing this comprehensive communications plan will require strong leadership and collaboration across the city, county and suburban cities, the state and federal government, and from businesses, nonprofits, universities, community groups, and individuals.
ISSUE:
Metro Health, SAFD, and GPA would like the opportunity to brief the Community Health and Equity Committee on progress on the HTT Implementation Plan.
ALTERNATIVES:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
FISCAL IMPACT:
There is no fiscal impact at this time.
RECOMMENDATION:
This item is for briefing purposes only.