Medical responders credit CDP for successful COVID-19 response

Two doctors who were among the first healthcare professionals to deal with the coronavirus in the United States attribute training at FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness for their team’s effective response in early March to the outbreak of the disease in their community.

In a recent interview with a Seattle radio station, Jeffrey Tomlin and Ettore Palazzo, the CEO and Chief Medical Officer, respectively, of a two-hospital healthcare system in the northern part of Washington state, said their team was “ready to engage and go to work confronting this (the outbreak)” because of the (disaster response) training many of the system’s staff members received at the CDP.

“We knew how to stand up an Incident Command system,” and we knew we would likely “be on our own for anywhere from five to seven days until the federal government could bring in resources,” said Tomlin.

Because of that, “We had a facility ready and, most importantly, we had a staff and culture here that was ready,” he said.

The healthcare system Tomlin and Palazzo manage serves a population of 850,000 and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, WA. Kirkland was once the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., with scores of nursing home residents in the city infected with and dying from the virus.

During the drive-time interview, Tomlin said his organization “committed to CDP training some time ago,” because it’s both “realistic” and “outstanding.”

Those attributes are why the system sends “about 20 staff members” a year to resident training at the CDP’s campus in Alabama, he said.