The Welcome back Andy.

Thanks.

So back on March 21st, you were on the podcast to explain where Alaska is with COVID-19 and how Alaska emergency medicine is dealing with it and preparing for it.

Yeah and I have to say the last month has been a really different month for everybody I think like not just emergency medicine right?

Yeah yeah it's definitely been I mean we've been hunkering down for over a month at this point.

Yeah, and a ton's changed at work. I mean, we're just, we're both lucky, but also reaping the benefit of being one of the places that

had it show up a little later and being fortunate to have some leaders that were

willing to adopt mitigating measures pretty early relative to other places and I think we're sitting in a good place in this next this next month is going to be quite interesting as well as we try to move forward from that.

So yesterday you texted me and asked if we should do an update soon because as the Anchorage municipality begins to open up again, there are some things you said that should get out there.

Yeah, I mean, I wanted to talk about a few things.

One is what I mean I wanted to talk about a few things.

One is what the hospitals have been doing

and the ears, you know, more specifically,

because that's my environment,

have been doing both what we've seen over the last month

but also how we're preparing and what how our practices have changed to try to both treat

COVID but also keep everyone else safe.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how,

you know, for years we've talked about trying

to get across to the community that the ER is for emergencies and not that sense that the ER gets overused and that's part away wait times get long at times. And really when you look at data

before COVID maybe five to eight percent of ER visits were avoidable, especially after Medicaid expansion, like it was a lot less, but about

5 to 8 percent of the population uses the ER when they should probably be using primary care instead.

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