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August 2026

A Note From Susan

We’re all recognizing that this continues to be a summer that demands top performance by each of us in the readiness and response community. The planning, training, and exercises conducted leading up to the FIFA World Cup 2026 helped to inform and improve our shared work to be stronger than ever. We’ve seen this shared work in our activations supporting the Central and Eastern Washington wildfires as we leveraged improved resources, frameworks and training to respond to the tragedy of the past months. This included support for hospitals maintaining care for their patients and long-term care residents that were impacted.

On a personal note, as I return from my leave, I want to share how much I appreciate being back working with my Network team and each of you to put our readiness planning into action. During my time out of office, the outstanding leadership of Kelly Hill — Director of Preparedness, Response and Recovery — and the commitment of the Network team, ensured that we were ready to support the largest sporting event our community has seen and could seamlessly pivot to the Spokane Complex and Central Washington wildfire responses. Thank you all.

Our entire team remains committed to prioritizing information of greatest interest to you.  As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions at info@nwhrn.org.

At-a-Glance 

Making Progress – Always On for You

All in a Day’s Work: More About Summer Readiness & Wildfire Response

There’s no question we’re facing an unprecedented wildfire season, accompanied by the associated risks of extreme heat and ongoing experience with degraded air quality.  As a community, we’ve quickly refocused our efforts in our unwavering focus to protect patients and preserve healthcare delivery during natural disasters.

The Network Responded

When recent wildfires resulted in patient evacuation and Long-Term Care resident relocation the Network activated to support the healthcare community, utilizing our tools and communication structures to provide an organized regional response:

  • A 24/7 Lifeline & Incident Command: Our Healthcare Emergency Coordination Center (HECC) activated our incident command to our highest level to support and coordinate the regional healthcare response.
  • Facility Evacuation Coordination and Patient Tracking: During our initial activation we supported DMCC in patient tracking and reconciliation to ensure the 27 patients were accounted for as part of the evacuation of the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center. As in all evacuation scenarios, the emphasis was on quick and efficient movement of patients from the impacted areas.  The nature of this type of patient movement often requires reconciliation of the destination for the individual, therefore the Network provided follow-up to ensure all patients had arrived safely which helped ensure families knew where their loved ones were safely placed.   
  • Long Term Care Residents: Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities were also able to evacuate their patients due to pre-planning efforts and preemptive memorandums of understanding (MOUs) which allowed for evacuation to local hospitals for care. The Network convened a focused response taskforce of LTC experts, DSHS partners and the Healthcare Authority to work to find appropriate placement for these LTC residents.
  • Information Sharing & Resource Management: Throughout the activation we assigned liaisons to work directly with activated city and county emergency operations centers (EOCs), as well as dedicated liaisons to coordinate directly with impacted healthcare partners.  It was imperative that teams could share their learnings and identify challenges that needed operational solutions, so we established and led daily situational awareness calls bringing impacted hospitals, Local Health Jurisdictions (LHJs), Emergency Management agencies, Department of Health, Washington State Emergency Management, associations, and others. In these calls partners shared their current status and areas of concern.

The Work Continues: Ebola and Special Pathogens

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda remains active and a global threat which requires ongoing monitoring and readiness. 

As we shared last month, it’s important to recognize the work in place by the CDC to screen U.S. citizens returning from affected countries at four designated U.S. airports. Thanks to the diligence of our LHJ monitoring returning travelers to Washington, we continue to observe that the vast majority assessed presenting low or very low risk. This work has placed additional demands on LHJ resources, which will be relied upon in the foreseeable future.

You can access the Special Pathogens Tip Sheet developed by the Network. Early recognition, timely communication, and a coordinated response are critical to ensuring appropriate patient management and the protection of healthcare personnel and the broader community.

Long Term Care Learnings in Action

For the past several years the Network team has been working alongside LTC partners to bolster response capabilities. What started as a forum for open discussions, situational awareness, training opportunities and defining action-oriented priorities, has now become a thriving connection across LTC organizations.

We have provided a series of trainings on emergency planning and preparedness, and real response focused panels to share lessons learned, along with hosting “Open Office Hours” for these partners. We are proud of the response to these well-attended sessions which have helped build relationships, share information on the exercise planning process, create connection opportunities for drills, and foster opportunities to share any recommendations or advice to make improvements for residents and staff.

Multiple information sessions included LTC facilities sharing their experiences and learnings from the Montesano Health and Rehab evacuation and an evacuation due to the flooding in Skagit county. After the wildfires, we heard from our LTC partners who let us know that due to attending these events, they revised their emergency operations plans and engaged with their communities. It was invaluable to hear that the learnings and actions they took following the sessions were paramount to their success when they needed to evacuate during the wildfires.

Our Network team recognizes that the long-term impacts and focus on recovery will be with communities well into the future and we stand ready to support them – and each of you – through this time.