12/15/10

Dear Fire Chiefs,

After much success with the initial clinics that we had with East Chatham and Ghent fire departments, CMH is ready to take on the physicals for the fire departments of Columbia County!!  I would like to thank the members of East Chatham and Ghent for their patience while we worked through the bugs of scheduling and paperwork.  Your help was very much appreciated!  

Here is a little bit of what we worked through these last couple months....

There were 3 clinics held at the Ghent Family Care off of Garage Place, Ghent.  Each was held on an evening during the week between the hours of 5pm - 8pm.  The average time that a firefighter went through the process was about an hour and one half. 

We found one major weakness....filling out paperwork, which took a considerable amount of time.  The paperwork is very thorough which helps the doctor, but is so time consuming to complete in the office.  By having the medical questionnaire completed prior to coming to the appointment can save at least 20 minutes of office time, if not more.  That will be a huge timesaver!   Attached you will find three versions of the medical questionnaire so you shouldn't have too many problems opening one of them.  

Over the last couple weeks CMH has purchased the needed equipment to do EKGs, audiometer (hearing) tests and pulmonary function tests (PFT). 

I will be booking for the year 2011 so even if you want something in the fall, we can make arrangements now if you would like.  Feel free to forward this to your Medical Officer or person in charge of your physicals and I will gladly help them with the arrangements.

The locations of physicals will be the closest CMH clinic to your fire station, which we will need to discuss at the time of scheduling. (for example Ghent Family Care for Chatham/Ghent/East Chatham and Copake/Hillsdale/Ancram would use the clinic in Copake).

You can email me back with the day(s) that you would like or you can call me at 821-3250.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. 

PS....If you are or will be using CMH for your "new members" initial physicals, please contact Occupational Health directly at 828-8364.  Ruth will still be scheduling those people on an individual basis.   This is also open to EMS, as well as to law enforcement. 

Thanks for all of your patience and I look forward to working with you!!