The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - A Tactical Planning Template for COVID-19 Testing Sites | PPP #13

Episode Date: March 22, 2020

In this short bonus episode, I walk the listener through how to set up COVID testing sites following the Public Health Planning "P" I created.

Hey everybody, Kevin Pannell working to continue to share some information about COVID-19 public health response. I posted a public health planning P on LinkedIn. I'll share that on peopleprocessprogress.com forward slash templates. I'm going to run through that public health planning P as quickly as I can with also being helpful. So imagine if you can a big block letter P where we're going to start on the very bottom, go up to the top, then around to the right to make the curve. So this is particularly for public health folks that are not ingrained in the incident command system. So bottom of the leg of the P, that straight part, part of our initial response, we're already in it, right? COVID's happening. We already know about it. So that the incident occurs, threat identified, we're already

there. Notification, health departments are getting notified all day long. They're notifying their central officers. They're working with the CDC. So that process is going on. The next step, step three, is initial response and assessment. Certainly that's already happening. Places are already responding. Health departments are already determining the potential threat. How many test clinics do we need to put on either at our space or out in public, how are we going to do that. The fourth step, we're going to brief our personnel, our epidemiological teams, our emergency coordinators, work with our partners in emergency management and public safety. The next thing we're going to do, if we haven't already, is get together our incident

command or unified command meeting. There should be unified commands all over this country that consists of public health, public safety people, and are working very closely with emergency management and other general government. In particular, for operations like this, public health, police, and fire seem to be the big players. And so get them together. You're going to make some objectives, right? So that first of those foundational four is get your smart objectives together. So one example, provide X number of COVID-19 tests to residents of X locality throughout the operational period, right? So we're going to give whatever number of tests we have in wherever we have, and then, you know, we're going to do that throughout operation. So we have this objective. We'll probably have a few more. We're going to make

sure everybody's on board with that. We develop those with our police and fire partners and public health. And then we're going to do tactics, and fire, right? What internal and external security do we need? What medical standby do we need for sick people that show up or someone that's stressed and has a heart attack? It's something that happens. The tactics meeting should have operations that should have planning to help support the process, but it's really operations meeting determining that. Operations should work super close with logistics that's going to get them their stuff, help people communicate, look at facilities, and safety, right?

That's critical, especially in this day and age. What are we going to screen for? How do we stay safe? How are we going to, you know, what personal protective equipment do we need? What security do we need to set or recommend? So think about those kind of things for your tactics. So, again, tactics is looking at the objective and figuring out the people and the stuff and the place that we need to make that happen. Then we're preparing for the planning meeting. So that

means all the folks that have already worked together, plus the other members of the command staff. And again, quick review, command staff is incident commander, public safety or public information officer, safety officer, liaison officer, that's command staff. General staff is your planning section folks, your operations section folks, that's command staff, general staff is your planning section folks, your operations section folks, your logistics section folks, and your finance and admin section folks. Planning facilitates the process. They track and do accountability. They do situation reports, operations, boots on the ground, epidemiologists, nurses, medical reserve corps volunteers, admin folks that are part of the testing clinic, right? So these are the

people doing the work, your police officers, your sheriff's deputies, your firefighters and EMTs at the clinic, that's operations. Logistics, these are the folks that get you the people and the stuff and the facilities and the food. Finance and admin, they pay for things, help do paperwork in the form of like compensation and claims and a few other things. That's a very quick overview. This planning meeting I mentioned, it should be 20 to 30 minutes. The owner of it is the Incident Commander or Unified Command. They want to hear what the plan is for this successful and efficient COVID-19 test site that you're going to set up.

Planning Section Chief, as we do for the process, is going to facilitate this meeting. And really what's going to happen is the Operations Section Chief, which again should probably be a public health physician or epidemiologist or whatever resource you have, is going to say, here's the plan that we worked with our partners on to make an efficient COVID-19 testing site. Here's when we want to do it. Here's how many kits we have. Here's how I broke out the groups or divisions or teams or task forces or single resources into the org chart, right? So during that tactics meeting, that's when we got our org chart going and then got stuff to support it. So operations are going to present that to the other command and general staff.

All the other players are going to speak up. There should be no surprises because we've already talked to each other throughout this whole planning process and had good conversations and good process. We weren't heads down on forms we didn't need to fill out yet. So after operations lays out the plan, if there's some questions, cool, shouldn't be a lot of conflict or concern, as I mentioned, because there should be no surprises really. Then planning is going to point to each of the general staff except for ops because it's their plan. They themselves will say, yep, I support it. Logistics, yep, I support it. Finance they themselves will say yep i support it logistics yep i support it finance and admin yep i support it and then we're going to go to command and they're going to yes i approve the plan now's the time when we take all this great information put

it on all the incident command system forms if you're not familiar with forums work with your emergency management your incident management teams whoever's in the know to get them where they need to go and you will have done this a bit. Now's the time to make a good comprehensive plan that has the right phone numbers, the right names, the right radio frequencies. This is the product that needs to be outstanding because it's going to go to the operations section that are out in the field doing the work. It's also what we're going to brief them on in the next step, which is the operational period briefing. Less than 30 minutes should be very efficient. These days, as of today, we're not going to get one in 200 people, let's say 100 people, 50 people in a room, right?

We may not have our unified command altogether. So do you do a web conference? Do you broadcast via radio? Do you set up a teleconference to do this briefing? Certainly feasible. So think about that too so logistics facilities wise and infrastructure wise think of how you can connect everybody so we can brief out and the criticality of this is ops is going to say hey here's what the plan is command we're going to get some hey go troops right we want that we need to see

leadership these days we're going to get what radios we're on, what frequencies, what network from logistics or our computer folks. Finance is going to talk about any constraints in spending. Safety is going to talk about personal protective equipment, security issues, heightened states of alert, public information officer. How can we talk about this or not? Direct everyone to me. So each of the command and general staff are going to speak to their part of the plan to our operations section chief in this operational period briefing. This is critical that we get right. It is also a push of information. It is not a Q&A session. During the ops brief, operations section chief is going to say, okay, group one, we're going to have a call at this time. Group two, we're going to have

a call at this time. Group three, et cetera. If we could do this in person, operations would be pointing to different corners in the same room saying team one, meet their team to meet their team three or group, whatever, but that can't happen. Right? So think about how you're going to dive deeper with each of the groups or the teams or the, whatever you've called them in your org chart. That's when you get into Q and a with your folks. That's when you can answer questions. But you have you know 50 100 people on a call you don't want to do that after this briefing you're sending folks out to whatever they're supposed to report that you determine in the tactics meeting and then you're operating then you're going to keep assessing evaluating the plan let's say you have testing set up for two three days in a row you're going to come back to your objectives you used on

day one are they still valid? What did we learn? Objectives typically can probably stay the same. When you get into your tactics, though, did we have enough? Did we have too much? Do we need more security? Do we need less? Did we run out of kits? So you'll mix up your tactics.

You should review these each day. Don't just copy and paste or just change the dates, right? Unless it's truly identical. Evaluate what you did. Do your after actions during the operational period. Then go back through it again. Get ready for the planning meeting. Make sure everybody supports it.

Make sure it comes in and approves it. Prep that new IEP. Make sure it's right. Make sure it's the right one with the right names, with the right dates. Brief everyone again and keep working. Now what we're calling the operational O. So cut off that leg of the P and we're just working this O as operations continue. That's pretty much what folks are day to day now with the tempo that we're going, maybe not doing testing every day, but certainly investigating and working like that.

I hope this very, very quick audio version or overview of that public health planning P that I shared is helpful. Folks can listen to it on their way in, on their way to operations, just in general. Thank you, everybody out there in public health, health care, public safety, emergency management, all the major partners. And to you, America, everywhere else around the world that's doing what we're supposed to do, washing our hands, staying away from crowds, looking out for each other, checking other checking in on each other giving each other positive vibes let's contribute to the success of this and stay safe as best we can we know we can do this godspeed