Operations Model

Assumptions for Structuring Internal Operations

• Isolation and quarantine is a subset of communicable disease surveillance activities.
• For a surge situation, it is possible to package isolation and quarantine monitoring as a subset of the work as long as reporting pathways to Communicable Disease-Surveillance are strong and quality assurance strategies exist.
• Cultural competency must be embedded in the work (e.g., interpreter services are always available as needed).
• All policies and procedures to assure the care of protected health information (PHI) apply. HIPAA applies unless waived by the Federal government.
• Even if not "fully mobilized," apply principles of Incident Command System to assist in the allocation of resources (e.g. staff, electronic equipment, field staff services).

Guidance for Developing Internal Operations

• Review and examine any relevant policies and current plans in place.
• Review and examine laws as they apply to isolation and quarantine.
• Examine the connections already in place for the daily work of communicable disease, clinical practice, community-based Public Health infrastructure, and health provider communities.
• Examine the organization emergency planning structure and determine how to connect this plan into overall planning.
• Think about evaluation measures.
• Identify the systems and processes needed to document assurance activities with respect to the legal requirements of isolation or quarantine. For example, addressing needs while in isolation or quarantine.

Using a Public Information Contact Center (PICC) Organizational Chart

Developing Job Cards

Job Cards need to prescribe the duties of the job and reference other job aids such as procedures, prepared FAQs, department policy/procedures, for example, HIPAA regulations.

Response Coordination

Key elements of case/contact response coordination are identification, assessment, monitoring and support. A variety of Tools & Samples have been developed that can be used for operational planning. Key tools for response coordination include:

• I&Q Bridge of Day-to-Day to Emergency Operations. This diagram illustrates the required activities once it is determined that an individual needs to be in isolation or quarantine, and the point at which daily monitoring can follow. Performing these activities may be fluid depending upon: the disease, role of health care providers/hospital discharge planners, work levels within CD-Epi, etc. The roles of Intake-Discharge Lead and Intake-Discharge Coordinator were developed to accommodate the fluidity of these activities. They also serve as key to managing the "caseload" within the IQRC. In addition these roles, which will probably entail multiple coordination and follow-up phone calls, free the Monitoring Lead (and Monitors) to pursue the volume of check-in work which will exist in the IQRC.
• Home Assessment. Form developed to check whether the home will be suitable for isolation or quarantine of individuals.
• Daily Monitoring Algorithm. After considering possible problems and interactions that could arise in the monitoring process, we found it necessary to simplify. This algorithm represents the fundamental work involved in a daily monitoring call.
• Questionnaire. PICC operators will use a version of this (depending on the disease outbreak) to query isolated or quarantined individuals about their health status.
• I & Q Resource Request Form This is the form we’ve created to aid PICC operators in determining the needs of clients when they call them.
• Daily Resource Fulfillment Plan Plan for communicating requests from multiple clients to community-based and other organizations providing services.