4 The Navy Care virtual visits app at Naval Hospital Jacksonville has won a FedHealthIT Innovation Award for the second year in a row.
Navy Care offers a live, virtual visit with a clinician from the patient s smartphone, laptop, or computer. Patients can use it from home, work, or wherever they want to receive care. It’s private, secure, and free.
“Virtual visits have become a key tool in health care delivery, particularly during the pandemic,” said Capt. Teresa Allen, NH Jacksonville commander and Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Jacksonville commanding officer. “And critically, virtual care supports readiness by decreasing patients’ time away from the mission, work, and family.”
Although the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in mass fear, grief, and loss for the collective society, for the Military Health System, it also provided an unprecedented opportunity to test – and confirm – its readiness during an ongoing public health emergency. Personifying the Defense Health Agency’s mission to create a ready medical force to support a medically ready force, thousands of MHS personnel continue to withstand the test in myriad ways.
During National Hospital Week, the MHS recognizes each of the many individuals and teams across the MHS who ensured the readiness mission didn’t falter throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, relying on creativity, adaptability, and teamwork to provide unwavering service to millions of beneficiaries around the world.
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Gilberto “Gil” Balli was named assistant special agent in charge of the FBI Jacksonville Resident Agency branch. He will oversee all operations in seven FBI offices in Daytona Beach, Ocala, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Panama City, Fort Walton and Pensacola.
• Orange Park Medical Center, an HCA Healthcare affiliate, named
Pete Long-Innes as chief operating officer of Orange Park Medical Center. He most recently was COO of Frankfort (Kentucky) Regional Medical Center, also an HCA affiliate. He has 12 years of experience within HCA Healthcare.
• At-Large Group 1 City Council member
Terrance Freeman joined Read USA as its first full-time CEO. Read USA is a nonprofit that has provided a quarter of a million free books to more than 73,000 children in Duval County since 2011.
Navy Cmdr. Glenn Pete Bradford s COVID-19 vaccination mission exemplifies the Navy s unofficial mottos of Always courageous and Not for self but for country.
As a nurse, Bradford serves with Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Jacksonville and Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Florida, and is one of 139 service members assigned to Task Force Southeast - Jacksonville. The task force is the primary Department of Defense support organization for the Federal Emergency Management Agency s response to COVID-19 in the region. He is the assistant officer in charge of the mission.
The vaccination hub – chosen by FEMA and the state because it is a medically underserved area – is in the parking lot of a mall in northern Jacksonville, Bradford said.
9 In April 2020, the Naval Hospital Jacksonville deployed a special diagnostic unit to the guided missile destroyer USS Kidd (DDG-100), then in the throes of a shipboard outbreak. The team comprised of two medical officers and five corpsmen was referred to as the “Rapid Response Team,” and for good reason. Within a mere three hours this team was both conceived, assembled and deployed on a mission to conduct COVID-19 diagnostic testing at sea. To date it is the only deployment of this type of platform in the history of the Navy.
A Call to Assistance:
On the morning of April 23, 2020, Comdr. Michael Kaplan was starting his day as the Director of Medical Services at Naval Hospital Jacksonville when his commanding officer, Capt. Matthew Case, alerted him of an outbreak aboard USS Kidd, then conducting counter-narcotic operations with the 4th Fleet.