With extreme weather events on the rise, an aging healthcare infrastructure, the challenges posed by a mass casualty event, or something as simple as an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) activation, improving the emergency response of healthcare facilities is a critically important goal. The RPA Navigator Emergency Management module is specifically designed to rapidly deliver unit and area emergency response reporting, and rolls up data via dashboard reporting for situational awareness. The system allows an organization’s command center (local, regional, division or corporate) to collect enough information to make informed, yet quick, decisions with actionable management information.
A group gets together and says “yes, we need to activate our EOP” or something happens that facilitates the rapid activation of an Emergency Code or Plain Language notification. Key staff report to the internal Command Center to provide their area status or a large group conference call takes place (where people are wondering why in the world they are on it when they could be getting ready or handling another situation). Sound familiar so far?
All the data is now flowing in and someone has to figure out what to do with it all. Who needs it to make decisions? How is all this data aggregated to ensure you are not missing something?
Decisions have to be made. Deploying resources to support an emergent event. Determining if you need to call back staff, how many and what type of clinical or non-clinical expertise. Communication with a corporate entity, critical partners in the community, a healthcare coalition or the state.
How far into this event are we before we truly have our hands around the situation? 5 minutes? 30 minutes? An hour plus? In any extended event, this may be a continuous cycle for many hours or days and this flow needs to continue. Are you really prepared?
Healthcare organizations pride themselves on efficiency with Electronic Health Records, automated staff and payroll systems, and data analytics. Yet in an emergency or in preparation for an event, all efficiencies are thrown out the window and we rely on smart people making good decisions with limited information or way too much information.
What if your facility had a gas leak and you had to evacuate a clinical unit or building and surge into other clinical areas? How quickly would you be able to get your hands on the surge planning for each of your units and area to know where the patients could be placed? Response by medical facilities to catastrophic and mass casualty events, such as Hurricane Sandy, the Boston Marathon bombing or the Pulse nightclub incident in Orlando, amply demonstrate the necessity of having developed protocols and rapid awareness of surge capabilities and planning.
The RPA Navigator Surge Capacity module incorporates the data from the surge capacity assessment of each inpatient and procedural area. Our team helps you gather and enter the data, and then that data is available to your command center, the clinical area (for future updating and enhancements) and facility emergency management staff immediately within Navigator.
Have you worked with your Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to plan out how many vehicles you would need to evacuate your patients: ambulances (and by type), wheelchair vehicles and traditional transport vehicles for ambulatory patients?
Included in RPA Navigator is a tool that enables all levels of healthcare facilities to assess their patients (real-time during a disaster or in advance for planning with EMS) to determine the type of vehicle necessary to relocate them to other healthcare facilities.
The RPA Navigator automates this process and allows you to update this by unit for planning or at the time of a real event. This is not the time a healthcare facility should be caught guessing, as massive cost can be incurred and patient lives impacted by poor planning.