A functional exercise to test the Medical Institution Evacuation Plan (MIEP) for Region 5, Lake Charles, was completed on June 3, 2009. Secure Computing Systems, Inc. is proud to announce that the test was completed successfully, and our At Risk: Patient Registry has been mandated in the area for this year’s hurricane season. Please see below for details.
 
Day 1 (June 3, 2009) will be a testing of the newly developed web-enabled patient manifest system that will support the Medical Institution Evacuation Plan (MIEP).  The web-enabled system is launched during an imminent storm of potentially catastrophic proportions that will facilitate the movement of multiple hospitals concurrently.  Although primary ownership of patient evacuation relies primarily on each facility, it is recognized that mass evacuations of multiple hospitals cannot be absorbed within the state.  Hence, state/federal assistance will be needed to support hospitals in the evacuation of hospital-admit patients to out-of-state National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) facilities.  In the past, hospitals that require federal/state assistance to evacuate their patients complete “Form1” which solicits information about the volume and type of patients that need to be evacuated.  Form1 was sent to the State ESF-8 via an excel spreadsheet which was then collated with other hospital Form1’s to be forwarded to the Global Patient Movement Requirement Center (GPMRC) which in turn would coordinate patient-manifest-requests (PMR) with the Tanker Air Command and Control (TACC) for military aircraft.  The information from Form1s provides critical information for state/federal planners – i.e., facilitates the identification of receiving airports, receiving hospitals, and military configured craft(s).  Since Gustav, DHH has worked closely with Secure Computing Systems, Inc. to place Form1 in a web-enabled system. June 3rd will test this web-enabled system in the field for the first time – linking hospitals, to ESF-8, to GPMRC and NDMS facilities.
 
Day 2 (June 4, 2009) will be a functional exercise of MIEP.  Critical assets such as the Incident Command footprint of state and federal stakeholders; medically configured military craft; Mobile Aero medical Staging Facility (MASF); Critical Care Aero Medical Team; ambulances; and airport setup will be demonstrating patient movement at Chennault airport.  The center of gravity for hospitals’ response during a hurricane threat is to shelter-in-place.  However, in the event it is found necessary to evacuate these institutions concurrently, this plan addresses the considerations for activating this plan, the assets required to activate and operationalize this plan, as well as the timeline, reporting, command, control and communications activities.  The MIEP is a BACK-UP Plan to the facility’s failed evacuation plan.  Please note that MIEP is a catastrophic plan which is enacted under conditions where multiple hospitals are evacuating concurrently and LA cannot absorb the volume of evacuating institutions.