Over the past two years, Ms. Clark and Grady Health System have used the LiveProcess platform during real world events ranging from the southern Georgia wildfires to the recent I-75 bus crash, as well as numerous exercises. This case study provides a full picture of how Grady regularly benefits from fully incorporating the LiveProcess platform into their complete healthcare emergency management program.
The First Real Life Test: An international disaster
As it turns out, the drill was a resounding success. Only weeks later in late July, however, LiveProcess would be put to the test in a real-life disaster, when the terrorist group Hezbollah shelled portions of Lebanon and Israel. The incident led to a massive repatriation of U.S. citizens living and working in the region; after hospitals on the East Coast were saturated, transport planes carrying the people were diverted to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Homeland Security, the effort in Atlanta required all evacuees to be processed through customs and quarantined while being assessed by the Centers for Disease Control for later discharge to their final destinations.
Grady Health System and other regional coordinating hospitals in Georgia were placed on standby to accept sick and wounded evacuees, many of whom were suffering from benign conditions such as dehydration, minor infections, rashes, and hypoglycemia to more severe cases of shrapnel and gunshot wounds. “We were at the airport with our emergency management team of paramedics, EMTs, and a designated staff person for placing people at hospitals,” Clark recalls. Just after learning of the disaster and incoming flights, Clark sent a “Message 911” broadcast through LiveProcess, which directed the announcement to designated emergency managers through e-mails, text messages and automated announcements to landline and cell phones.
Clark said the LiveProcess event log was an invaluable tool during the crisis, allowing her to post incoming flight schedules, and provide patient injury assessments and other critical information to hospitals and agencies such as the Red Cross, airport EMS and Atlanta Port officials. Many evacuees were treated by airport paramedics and Red Cross volunteers; others were transported to local hospitals or if well enough to travel, were transported to hospitals in their home towns.
During the crisis, Clark kept in close contact with Dr. David Kim, commander of the CDC’s quarantine unit, who was supervising the final disposition of each evacuee. Clark would frequently post Kim’s e-mails sent to her cell phone by copying and pasting them into the LiveProcess event log. The best one came on August 2, when she posted Kim’s final kudos: “On behalf of the CDC Atlanta Quarantine Station, I would like to thank all of you and your staff for helping us do our job better. We enjoyed being a member of the caring and professional team.”
“LiveProcess taught us that we could handle a lot of people, and address the needs for all the hundreds of people we helped,” Clark said. Indeed, more than 1,900 passengers, some of whom included women in the latter stages of pregnancy, were processed, treated and released over the eight-day ordeal at the airport.
An efficient debriefing...
After the crisis had ended, LiveProcess allowed Clark to summarize costs, review documents, and capture activities recorded by the event log, giving her keen insights into improving her own emergency management program at Grady. “We now have a lot of wonderful things we can show people,” she said. A real-time center for logging and tracking information during disaster response situations, event logs are not only a powerful tool for managing the status of ongoing events, but also serve as an invaluable historical reference guide and training tool for preparedness and response in the future, Clark said.
The Aftermath...
Since the Lebanon evacuee crisis, Grady Health System has successfully deployed LiveProcess in a number of major emergencies and disasters. But none compared to a spate of incidents over one week in March 2007. First came a bomb scare in the South Fulton Hospital emergency room. The next day, a multi-vehicle accident inundated local hospitals. The following day, a tornado blew through Sumter County, taking out a hospital in western Georgia. The day after that, another multi-vehicular collision injured several police officers, one of whom eventually died. A day later, a bus carrying Bluffton University's baseball team from Toledo, OH, crashed and overturned onto a freeway overpass in Atlanta, killing seven. On the following Monday, there was a hazardous materials poisoning at a private parochial high school.
Flexible Use of LiveProcess...
“Guess what happened in each of those incidents?” Clark said. “We started an event log and we managed the crisis extremely well. Some of the time I wasn’t physically at the hospital and was without a computer, but I was able to contact my designated staff member at Grady – and in one case, a fellow RCH in his office – to start a log; from my phone I was able to relay important information and stay apprised of the situation in real-time. It was so cool.”
Clark said having LiveProcess online during those ordeals allowed Grady to better manage the situation. “We were able to get patients transported more quickly, communicate efficiently with other hospitals and agencies, even arrange for hotel rooms for families of victims through the hospital liaison at Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency,” she said.
