Anne Arundel Medical Center puts LiveProcess disaster preparedness tools to the test
VERONA, NJ (July 30, 2008) – Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, MD, made use of the nation's first standardized platform for healthcare disaster and emergency preparedness when it participated June 18 in one of Maryland's largest exercises to test for a potential pandemic influenza outbreak.
The medical center joined state and local health agencies, hospitals, healthcare providers, schools, businesses and community organizations in the large-scale drill.
It was the medical center's first major live test using LiveProcess, a market-leading, centralized web-based solution which has been successfully used by hospitals around the country to coordinate statewide real-time disaster scenarios, including pandemic flu exercises.
LiveProcess gives hospitals, other healthcare providers and public health agencies the ability to evaluate and manage their own preparedness as well as coordinate response with other entities in times of disaster and large-scale healthcare emergencies.
The LiveProcess platform, the only disaster preparedness solution endorsed by the American Hospital Association, helps hospitals manage many aspects of their disaster preparedness plans and response, and makes it easier and faster than ever to monitor and maintain their facility's state of readiness.
Managing Widespread Influenza
The Anne Arundel drill, which was coordinated by the state's Department of Health and the Office of Emergency Management, was used to test the ability of the department and various hospitals and agencies to respond to a potential widespread influenza outbreak and was reportedly the first time all the groups have come together in a realistic exercise.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pandemic flu could lead to a high mortality rate because it is an extremely virulent new virus to which people have little immunity and there is no vaccine.
The last major real flu outbreak to hit Maryland and the rest of the country occurred in 1918, when it left more than 50 million dead worldwide. Anne Arundel county health officials estimated there were 2,068 cases of influenza with 857 deaths, including 700 deaths at Fort Meade alone.
Conducting a Large-Scale Exercise
The exercise scenario began on the assumption that medications and vaccines were unavailable for the roughly one-third of the county population that was infected. Employees from the state department of health and military personnel from Fort Meade played roles as mock "patients," family members and crowds. Others worked managing communications and events with other agencies.
Each "patient" was instructed to pose as a person with various flu-like symptoms ranging from mild to severe, and ID cards around their necks listed the symptoms, along with critical identifying information and vital signs. A bus carrying approximately 25 "patients" arrived at Anne Arundel Medical Center the morning of June 18. Assigned medical staff worked with the hospitals emergency management team to coordinate the care of patients.
"We also simulated the impact to staff by randomly selecting 40 staff members and assigning mock symptoms to them. They were then processed through a triage and assessment exercise to determine their symptoms and provide a response to those systems. This simulation was in recognition of the fact that a pandemic will impact staff as much as the rest of the public," said Douglas Abel, Chief Information Officer for Anne Arundel Medical Center.
"Our measures of success in any exercise are Did we learn anything to improve our response?' and 'Are we getting better in our response to emergency incidents?'" added Abel. "The answer to both was yes. The purpose of completing drills is to learn how to better prepare for any incident we may face. Also, with each drill, every participant becomes more comfortable in the role they play and their approach to their response."
"The exercise went extremely well and it provided us with an opportunity to view how the hospital was going to respond in their natural setting using our platform," said Fred Sievers, LiveProcess senior systems engineer. "Anne Arundel Medical Center also wanted us there to be able to see how they could more effectively use the LiveProcess tools during an emergency situation."
The LiveProcess platform includes an exercise creation feature that allows a facility to customize a mock event ranging from minor emergency events to full-scale disasters such as hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes. The platforms information sharing and communications tools also help hospitals, healthcare providers and government agencies cooperate at local, regional and even state and nationwide levels.
Sievers said a number of hospital staff logged onto the system throughout the day to take advantage of the communication features of the LiveProcess event log. Inside the Anne Arundel Medical Center Command Center, a large computer touch screen displayed the event log, allowing staff to constantly monitor events and posted messages from various drill participants. "As events unfolded, staff were able to track tasks and resources in real-time online, instead of shuffling various pieces of paper," Sievers said.
The Growing Need to Automate Emergency Response Management
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, hospitals must play a key role in developing disaster preparedness plans, and they need to coordinate efforts with public health systems and appropriate governmental agencies. Still, many facilities are unfamiliar with the latest recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding pandemic flu outbreaks, leaving them unprepared for a coordinated response. One recent report by the South Carolina Hospital Association found that many of the nation's hospitals are not adequately prepared to meet such large-scale emergencies and disasters.
"We are in the early stages of understanding everything that LiveProcess can do for us during an incident response and we made good progress in using the toolset to help with our response and execution," Abel added. "The LiveProcess tool set offers many potential benefits to the work of a Command Center, such as coordinating the response of individuals and teams in the Center and throughout the organization. We're working on learning how to tap that potential."
LiveProcess users are kept up-to-date regarding pandemic flu warnings and outbreaks, natural disasters and human-caused events via exclusive disaster news feeds and the LiveProcess community. Area resources are quickly determined using the LiveProcess beds and inventory function and emergency coordinators in affected areas can use the LiveProcess event log to coordinate the most efficient use of all available resources.
About LiveProcess
In 2004, LiveProcess launched the healthcare industry's first exclusive standardized web-based program for emergency and disaster preparedness in response to the events of September 11 and the worldwide SARS pandemic. Since then, hospitals have stepped up their readiness efforts in order to be better prepared in responding to not only conventional disaster threats, but man-made events and health crises such as pandemic illness.
The LiveProcess platform provides a wide and growing range of fully integrated tools to assist in emergency management, including Hazard Vulnerability Analyses (HVAs), Incident Command System (ICS), NIMS Compliance, Drills for Readiness and Compliance, Event Log, and Competency-Based Training capabilities.
For more information, visit www.liveprocess.com.
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