assistant deputy chief sandy tong. actually, i'm not sure which one you're referring to, commissioner cleaveland? >> commissioner cleaveland: it's the memo that was dated august 9, and it's to the -- to all the san francisco e.m.s. providers, from john brown -- >> so b.l.s. authorization -- >> commissioner cleaveland: the subject matter is temporary b.l.a. authorization from august 15 to august 31, so basic life safety authorization for a two-week period. i just kind of wanted you to give me a more layman's term explanation of what this memo was all about. >> sure. sorry about that. so this is a b.l.s. authorization memo that allows the b.l.s. providers to come into the 911 system sort of as a back up to address, you know, increased call volume, increased call volume due to covid. if staffing levels are challenged, the system is able to accept up to four b.l.s. ambulances in the system for transport to hospitals. that's the very short version. >> commissioner cleaveland: okay. and instead of having to have the, what, a

assistant deputy chief sandy tong. so one of the things that we're going to be looking at is the process of how we address different changes that need to occur, whether it's, you know, the change to department or the policies. there's an advisory committee that discusses and improves the policy and protocol changes that might be under discussion, so we want to be able to be part of the problem solving, the addressing the solution of some of these policies that do come out so we're all on the same page and have a discussion about how best to address them, so that's one of the processes that we're trying to be more collaborative with. and i could get into specifics, but there are specific protocols that we've had in the past with our airway that we're trying to just get better discussions to discuss them. it gets really detailed, and so i think that's probably not necessarily within the purview of this particular meeting, but there are a lot of different things that we have been tasked to, you know, do, to respond to. we

assistant deputy chief sandy tong. so one of the things that we're going to be looking at is the process of how we address different changes that need to occur, whether it's, you know, the change to department or the policies. there's an advisory committee that discusses and improves the policy and protocol changes that might be under discussion, so we want to be able to be part of the problem solving, the addressing the solution of some of these policies that do come out so we're all on the same page and have a discussion about how best to address them, so that's one of the processes that we're trying to be more collaborative with. and i could get into specifics, but there are specific protocols that we've had in the past with our airway that we're trying to just get better discussions to discuss them. it gets really detailed, and so i think that's probably not necessarily within the purview of this particular meeting, but there are a lot of different things that we have been tasked to, you know, do, to respond to. we