Home : Research : Projects : Health Care Facilities Partnership Project

With a $2.5 million grant award from the Department of Health and Human Services, the South Central Region of Pennsylvania will develop an innovative strategy to address surge capacity and hospital preparedness for public health emergencies. The healthcare facilities Partnership will take explicit advantage of the 10 year experiences of the counter-terrorism task force (SCTF) in this region. The SCTF includes representation from 2 outlying health clinics and the Office of Public Health Preparedness, 16 hospitals, 8 county emergency management agencies, and the other critical entities required for effective public health and safety for a population of just over 2 million people. Our most recent and comprehensive hazards and vulnerability analyses (HVA) have recently been further informed by an SCTF led Pandemic Influenza exercises completed in June 2007. Gaps in our preparedness status included:

• the lack of a surge capacity on the parts of key vendors that provide critical supplies and equipment to critically ill patients, such as supplemental oxygen and fuel
• more planning with community agencies to create regional facilities capable of receiving low-acuity patients or hospital staff members who would be able to rest and recover (e.g. pilot utilization of local hotel, Hershey Lodge, to add to surge capacity)
• some hospitals lacked a completed pandemic plan and demonstrated a resulting delay in shifting their response operations from a reactive to a proactive stance. These preparedness gaps will serve as an important immediate focus of our efforts, utilizing the additional capabilities brought by new members of the Partnership.

We have a motivated partnership team with experience in planning and assessing preparedness for medical emergencies, such as pandemic flu. While we have made progress over our ten years of operation, we still have significant gaps in preparedness that the SCTF Health Care Facilities Preparedness Project (the Partnership) can help us reduce. The Project has six goals:

• Enhance situational awareness of capabilities and assets in the South Central Region of Pennsylvania
• Develop and pilot test advanced planning and exercising of plans in the Region.
• Augment written Medical Mutual Aid Agreements between health care facilities in the Region, with a special emphasis on hospitals.
• Develop and strengthen Partnership relationships through joint planning, frequent communication, simulation, and evaluation of preparedness.
• Ensure NIMS Compliance, including for the 14 new NIMS activities, for all hospitals in the Region.
• Develop and test a plan for effective utilization of ESAR VHP volunteers.

 

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Thomas E. Terndrup, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Professor and Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine
Associate Dean for Clinical Research
Penn State College of Medicine

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