Departments of Health Inform Hospitals of Local Outbreaks

John D'Angelo, MD, senior vice president, executive director Emergency Medicine Services at Northwell Health, discusses how hospitals use updates from the Department of Health to remain aware of any potential outbreaks.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“We pay attention to the Department of Health alerts to know when anything is on the rise and when [there] is, we just inform the staff, we make sure that everyone is aware of what to look out for, we ask the right questions when we’re intaking patients to see if [it’s] a possibility [that their infection is associated with an outbreak], and if it is, we manage it.

We haven’t seen as much [cases of mosquito-borne infections] in the past year or so as we did during the West Nile [Virus] days, a couple of years ago, but these types of things can poke their head out at any time. It’s just a matter of being aware, keeping our antennas up, and also, the Department of Health is very good whenever there’s an outbreak of anything, even if it’s two or three cases of something that’s a little bit exotic or a little bit unusual. There [are] alerts that go out regularly, and then myself and my team disseminate that down to our clinical staff.”