Bloomsburg CRNA Selected for Trauma Critical Care Team

Elite team responds immediately to disasters and public health emergencies domestically and around the globe

Christopher Heiss, who has worked for more than 10 years at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., has been a flight nurse, a flight paramedic, and even the developer of a protective intubation shield, or the Barrier for Respiratory Aerosolization (BRA), equipment that protected frontline hospital workers and ambulance personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And now, after years of trying, he can finally add one more major achievement to his already impressive resume: Heiss has been named to the exclusive U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (US HHS) National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Trauma Critical Care Team (TCCT).

TCCT is the United States’ special operations medical force that is called on within the first 24 to 48 hours of natural and man-made disasters and public health emergencies to set up field hospitals or augment health systems to provide critical, operative, and emergency care to people in need.

TCCT members are medical professionals who are deployed at the request of local authorities to supplement federal, state, local, tribal and territorial resources, and the only component of the NDMS that is international, going anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice to respond to the crisis and then coordinate with the NDMS Patient Movement System to get U.S. citizen evacuated home or to a safe location for care.

While each state has at least one or multiple Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, with thousands of members nationwide, all working under the umbrella of Health & Human Services’ NDMS, TCCT is an elite operation, even serving at every presidential inauguration and State of the Union address. The United States has just one TCCT with 70 to 80 members spread across the country --- and Heiss is one of them.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do, something that has been a long-time goal of mine,” Heiss said. “It’s incredibly humbling.”

Heiss applied in August 2020 and more than a year later finally was interviewed by a TCCT pioneer who was on the scene after earthquakes in Haiti and Iran, during flooding from Hurricane Katrina, and at ground zero after the 911 terrorist attacks on the United States. Just like crises emerge without warning, so did that interview. The trauma surgeon called one random Sunday afternoon asking him if he could talk “right now.” Yes, of course he could, he said.

Heiss was offered the position in October and takes his oath in January.

Heiss will continue to work for Geisinger. Like other TCCT members, he will keep his civilian job but have periods when he is on call for deployments and must serve out his mission before returning home.

As excited as he is about fulfilling this dream, Heiss says he is excited that eventually he will be able to serve the TCCT as a CRNA from Pennsylvania --- something that simply would not have been possible without Act 60 of 2021.

Before the enactment of that law on June 30, Pennsylvania had been one of just two states that failed to recognize “certified registered nurse anesthetist” in some form. With no definition for nurse anesthetists under the state’s Professional Nursing Law, CRNAs were recognized only as registered nurses.

That means Heiss had to secure credentials from another state to serve on the TCCT as a CRNA, which he did. By granting formal title recognition to nurse anesthetists, Act 60 changes all that --- for him and thousands of other CRNAs in Pennsylvania.

Heiss is already providing lifesaving and life-sustaining care to people where he lives and works. But now, through TCCT, whether it is deploying in the wake of a tornado or responding to a terrorist attack, he can put those same skills to work to help people across the United States and around the world.

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Spotlight PA: At last minute, Pa. lawmakers vote to extend dozens of COVID-19 waivers

This article was originally published on Spotlight PA.

by Danielle Ohl of Spotlight PA | Sept. 29, 2021

📷 FRED ADAMS / FOR SPOTLIGHT PA

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania legislature unanimously voted Wednesday to extend dozens of regulatory waivers put into place last year to help health-care providers fight COVID-19.

Without action, the waivers would have expired Thursday, potentially exacerbating ongoing staffing crises in hospitals and long-term care institutions, which are again facing rising COVID-19 cases. Health-care workers and their advocates had warned any lapse in the relaxed rules would have renewed administrative burdens and made fighting the ongoing pandemic more difficult.

Wednesday’s action will keep the waivers in place until March 2022 while the legislature considers a number of bills that would make the regulatory suspensions permanent. Gov. Tom Wolf will sign the bill.

“The governor is thankful the legislature engaged the administration and stakeholders and ultimately agreed with most of the administration’s recommendations on extending COVID-19-related waivers that are still in use,” spokesperson Lyndsay Kensinger said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Wolf approved nearly 100 waivers to ease some of the rules governing health-care workers and ensure as many professionals as possible were on the ground in hospitals, vaccination clinics, and long-term care facilities.

The temporary changes were made under a disaster declaration that later became a target for legislative Republicans unhappy with the administration’s business closures.

Buoyed by two successful constitutional amendments that curtailed the executive’s power, the GOP-controlled General Assembly ended Wolf’s emergency order in June, while allowing the waivers to remain in place until Sept. 30.

Under the bill passed Wednesday, all suspensions under the Department of Health, Department of Human Services, and the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs will remain in place until March unless Wolf and the agencies decide to terminate them sooner.

Among the waivers extended are those allowing out-of-state practitioners to treat patients in Pennsylvania, permitting retired or lapsed professionals to return to medicine, and expanding who can give a vaccine.

The waivers also allow patients to access care via telemedicine, which as of now is neither allowed nor prohibited in Pennsylvania law, creating a gray area for health-care providers and insurance companies.

Lawmakers have introduced bills in both the House and Senate to provide rules and regulations surrounding telemedicine, but past efforts have broken down over partisan disagreements. Wolf vetoed a telemedicine bill last year because it would have prevented health-care providers from prescribing abortion-inducing medicine.

As a number of other bills that would make regulatory suspensions permanent await consideration, two removing administrative barriers for physician assistants passed Wednesday.

The Joint State Government Commission is studying the impact of the waivers and which should stay in place to remove barriers to employment in the state. Glenn Pasewicz, executive director of the committee, said a report should be out by late October.

Separately, lawmakers on Wednesday directed various state agencies to post a report listing which waivers were and were not extended by Nov. 1.

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State Regulatory Waivers That Helped Hospitals, Health Care Providers During Pandemic Set To Expire

Published September 16, 2021 at 9:15 AM EDT

🎧 LISTEN • 22:30

📸: Jae C. Hong / AP

On today’s program: We hear how waivers that provided more flexibility and eased administrative burdens helped medical facilities face the pandemic, but they’re set to expire later this month; an obstetrician-gynecologist explains why a new bereavement leave policy for city employees will help those facing pregnancy loss; and a conversation about the increasing mental health needs of children and teenagers in the pandemic.

Medical waivers that lowered administrative barriers for health care workers set to expire (0:00 - 8:14)

Last year in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, hospitals and health care providers were swamped with patients who contracted COVID-19. Gov. Tom Wolf approved waivers to keep medical workers on the job and help bring in others, but those waivers are set to expire on Sept. 30.

“They were supposed to give a little bit of flexibility to people … [whose] jobs were upended or they were on the frontlines of fighting COVID,” says Danielle Ohl, a reporter with Spotlight PA.

One example of how these waivers worked is nurses or doctors with lapsed licenses could return to work in facilities, removing some administrative barriers.

Nearly 100 such waivers were implemented, however, Ohl says there isn’t good data on how many people used them.

Should the waivers not be extended, Ohl says boards that govern professions with waivers will be overwhelmed.

“In the most dire case, a nurse could be pulled off the floor because their paperwork didn’t go through or it expired,” says Ohl. “There is just a fear that the administrative burden isn’t going to be dealt with and they don’t really know what that means, and they don’t want to take a chance in breaking the law.”

Ohl says the legislature could extend the waivers, but it’s unclear if that will happen while the legislature is currently out of session.