A MESSAGE FROM THE CMS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
PPE-AN ACRONYM THAT MEANS LIFE By Pam Irwin, CMS Executive Director I have a son in the Army, so I'm used to acronyms. I had not heard of PPE before March. Now, I'll never forget it or what it means to the physicians and others who need it. It started with a suggestion by Dr. Ray Bellamy on March 23rd. Some dental and medical practices are temporarily shuttered or seeing patients by telehealth only and might have Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that they could donate to those still seeing patients in their offices. It started slowly. A few N95 masks were received. My Dad called from Mobile, Alabama, and said the Medical Society of Mobile County was on the news about collecting PPE for physicians. I looked up the news video and visited the medical society's website. Rosalie Carlin created a professional donation request image to post on social media. The Capital Medical Society Foundation's PPE effort officially launched. Then, I received a phone call from Jeff Burlew at the Tallahassee Democrat. We are Facebook friends. He'd seen our post and wanted to interview me about what we were doing, why it mattered, and what we needed. The article he wrote was picked up by the news media and on the local news, and my new nickname in the office became "RADAR." This endearing member of the M*A*S*H cast had legendary abilities to secure the most hard-to-find items needed for their M*A*S*H unit. The real story is about the donors who are helping meet the PPE needs of physicians. Hospitals are prioritized to receive PPE. They should be. However, physicians in practice outside of hospitals have a significant need for PPE as well. The pipeline of resources to them has not been as abundant. With the help of many new connections, we have made inroads in securing PPE. An Aaron's Furniture manufacturer in Cairo, GA, makes face masks. I received an email from Greg Cohen, owner of Lofty Pursuits. He connected me to Will Hawe of Making Awesome. Will is committed to producing and donating face shields made by his team on 3D printers. Visiting his location, I watched him trying to make face shields, hole-punch the plastic shields, and make deliveries. How could we help him? Dr. John and Barb Mahoney became hole punchers for the face shields. We used 8
CAP SCAN - A CAPITAL MEDICAL SOCIETY PUBLICATION
social media to call for others with 3D printers that could be referred to Will's team to also produce face shields. Local schools with 3D printers have joined the face shield collaboration. Through Will, I learned that the Innovation Hub at FSU had been closed as non-essential by FSU's General Counsel. Since they are able to make face shields, many in the community disagreed. I emailed President Thrasher who understood the need and began efforts to get a waiver for them to reopen. President Thrasher connected me to Emily Pritchard at the Innovation Hub. While we wait for the Innovation Hub's door to open, she connected me to a supply chain resource in Monticello, who is getting quicker turn-around on orders for N95 masks, surgical masks, and face shields. We began taking preorders from practices. The CMS Foundation pays the supplier; the practices reimburse the CMS Foundation. The board room is our PPE triage area for deliveries. Dr. Celeste Hart suggested a Tallahassee man contact me. He is in the tradeshow business and was successfully receiving KN95 masks from China. He offered his help. On behalf of the CMS Foundation, I took pre-orders for over 4,000 KN95 face masks on a Saturday in five hours. We decided to try two orders of 500 to see if they would make it through customs. We were not required to make any payment until they arrived. Two weeks later, I got the text that they were in Tallahassee. The invoicing and distribution began. A new order for 2,000 was submitted. Those arrived in one week and were available for delivery within four hours of being dropped off at the CMS office. We will continue to fill the original requests and move on to a maintenance level. There have been incomprehensible solutions that could only have been divinely orchestrated. Last week, Dr. Gao from the Digestive Disease Clinic, asked if I had any N95 masks. I shared we had no donated ones but were about to take pre-orders. I asked about the need. She shared that some non-elective G.I. procedure patients were hesitant to have surgery in a hospital setting at this time and were opting for their non-elective procedures to be done at DDC. She said they had to close because they were out of N95 masks. That was 4:00 p.m. At 5:00 p.m., a lab director from