I think this might be my favourite delivery yet. RAAPID is an integral part of our integrated provincial health system. It's the heart of getting patients to the places where they can receive the care they need.
RAAPID: Referral, Access, Advice, Placement, Information & Destination, is a call center that serves as a single point of contact for providers in order to enable physicians to access a higher level of care for patients and to coordinate the patient flow through repatriation.
This team is split between offices in Edmonton and Calgary and thanks to a gracious nomination by an anonymous someone on the RAAPID South team I was connected with the manager of the north team to make this happen.
Arriving at this undisclosed office complex, I called up Protective Services to ask about gaining access. The security guard wasn't keen on letting me in so I called the number the RAAPID manager provided me (for when I was on the right floor...) and a nurse came down.
We chatted in the doorway, apologized for pulling her from her desk, and she explained she only has two days off in October. I'd mentioned that I'd heard AHS CEO Verna Yiu state the team had done 290 inter-facility transfers in September - she said that number seems considerably low.
This team utilizes ground, helicopter, and fixed-wing ambulances to move patients from one facility, or usually city, to another. They also take care of bringing these patients back once they've received the care they needed.
Throughout the pandemic, RAAPID has been assisting with load levelling in facilities too. Their workload and scope of practice increased significantly and it hasn't let up since the start of the first wave.
This offsets the workload of their hospital colleagues by ensuring patients are transferred between facilities as seamlessly as possible. Clearly, this is an essential service that is often not well known or recognized.
No new donations today, so our total still stands at $5381.79 from 157 donors. I have 18 depts worth of coffee left with 480 cards ($2400) delivered to departments.
The full #CoffeeforHCWs story is here: https://chadohman.ca/coffeeforhcwsab/
Tomorrow night I'm delivering to the Royal Alex CVICU (Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit) thanks to a nomination from Melissa R.
If you'd like to nominate a dept, here's where you can do that: https://chadohman.ca/nominate-a-unit/