Mobile Flu Clinics enabled with prescreening flu assessment... but do not forget the buzzing pagers!

Take a look at Kaiser Permanente's newest doctor's office on wheels, being shipped from California to Hawaii's Big Island.

Now consider this possibility if/when the swine flu infection numbers and deaths accelerate, and the media reporting begins to cause a surge of worried well into ER rooms:

- Swine flu mobile clinics.
- GIS mapping to set up the temporary clinic locations to coincide with specific geographic infection areas pinpointing communities and neighborhoods.
- PRE screening done via assessments embedded with-in a resilience network at the local community level, or city, county or state level. Also available via phones, hand helds devices.
- If a visit to the clinic is indicated after the assesment, they are taken directly to scheduling center. Surge of walkins must be part of the scheduling anticipation.
- Use various notification means to inform patients that the health care team is ready to see them in "30 minutes" (or whatever makes sense). Text messaging, land line call back, even those buzzing pagers that restaurants hand out when your table is not ready and you need to go away for 30 minutes to could prove valuable for minimizing the congregation of ill for hours and hours in waiting rooms.

With pre assessments to weed out the worried well, from the possibly infected, scheduling and notification technology, and the ability of a flu clinic on wheels to move from community to community, it is possible many individuals may be with-in a 30 minute commute. For those that are clearly too sick to come into the mobile clinic, or those that are likely ill and only have public transportation as a resource, perhaps the staff will include a home visitation team that can interface with local agencies to provide the essential services a sick patient or family may require. The option that such services may be provided by a community organization (think Red Cross, Civilian Medical Corp, Hospice organizations, etc) may be possible. Especially if the volunteers can be assured of immunity from the flu (vaccine, all ready had the flu, etc).

If you know of something like this, or in the works, please comment. This is the sort of sharing of ideas, and information that the Resilience System can facilitate.