23 March 2020 – COVID-19 (coronavirus)
Message 1 of 3
Dear Colleagues,
I wanted to give you an update on how we are managing the response to COVID-19 locally and across Queensland. This is the first of three messages I’ll be sending today.
As a health whole system we are working together to maximise our ability to appropriately respond to this unprecedented situation. The Queensland Health Director-General is the lead for system wide governance and the Chief Health Officer is responsible for the public health response.
Yesterday, the Director-General moved the health system into full pandemic response. This means we are working as a networked system along with our key provider partners to refocus the public healthcare system to create the capacity we need.
Additionally, the State Health Emergency Coordination Centre (SHECC) is providing a whole of health system coordination and support role. The SHECC feeds up into the State Disaster Coordination Centre which includes the Premier, and down into our Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC).
The diagram below shows how the system works together across the state and throughout Metro North. Our Strategic Pandemic Group is the primary decision making group for our HHS pandemic response. The operational arm of this group is our Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC) where our Metro North incident management team are based.
HEOC provides Metro North wide coordination and feeds information to and from our directorate emergency operations centres (EOCs), plus Public Health EOC, which is also managing the airport operations, and our new virtual services including our virtual wards.
Within the incident management teams, we have the key functions of command, planning, operations, logistics, finance and admin, clinical advice, communications and intelligence.
Communicating with staff
Providing you with the most up to date information about our response and how to protect yourself is crucial. Every day there is a series of cascading briefings at all levels of our organisation and the health system.
Additionally, we receive SHECC situation reports daily which provide an update on what’s happening around the state. Our HEOC provides daily situation reports to our facility incident management teams every afternoon.
From today the Director General will send a daily message to the whole of Queensland Health updating us all on what’s happening.
Dr Liz Rushbrook will continue to send a daily Metro North wide email about what we’re doing and anything new you need to know. Our facility and directorate executive directors are also providing regular updates through email and staff forums.
Jackie is providing updates to our primary health partners on Mondays and Fridays. This afternoon I will start a weekly Monday ‘match report’ summarising the previous week and providing an update on testing numbers and patients with confirmed COVID-19 in our care.
We are updating our Metro North COVID-19 QHEPS page every day, so keep an eye there for up to date information.
This week our senior executive team are holding a series of small group forums to provide an update and answer questions. We will continue to keep you updated as the situation evolves.
The coming months will be challenging as we deal with an influx of patients with COVID-19, influenza and our usual winter illnesses. Now is the time to lean on our values – teamwork, respect, compassion, high performance and integrity – as we all get tired ourselves and deal with an increasingly worried community. With kindness and understanding, we can support each other and come through this experience together.
Regards,
Shaun Drummond
Chief Executive