West Virginia Healthcare Coalitions “Drill” evacuation and Med Surge From the Ground up West Virginia Healthcare Coalitions “Drill” evacuation and Med Surge

Why Evacuation? 2017 and early 2018 has seen an unusually high rate of disasters Extremely active and destructive hurricane season in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico Lethal wildfires in California – destroyed miles of land and properties The deadliest mass shooting events in American history – 34 mass shooting incidents since Feb. 21, 2018 according to the Gun Violence Archive, including the Parkland, FL school shooting that killed 30 people An early and severe flu season Multiple Hurricanes on the East coast

Preparedness is Critical If it wasn’t clear before, it should be now Preparing for disasters before they hit is critical to survival and recovery Evacuation can happen, even in WV

Introducing the CST We didn’t like the idea One year later, after all seven coalition regions completed their first CST, Evacuation of an entire facility is not as unlikely as once thought SO, we Prepared!

Planning Meetings and Conference Calls DHHR-CTP + WVHA +Health EP&R + ASPR +Regional Coordinators

4 Core Members Who Participated

7 Coalitions completed CST in 9 Months Lessons Learned The time it took for WV hospitals evacuating to report the total number of evacuating patients to the HCC was done in less than 15 minutes WV stood up command efficiently in less than 10 minutes Task specific training is needed in Live Process and additional staff trained WV has a limited number of PICU, NICU and Psych beds available

Lessons Learned cont….. Credentialing nurses that need to go with patients to receiving facilities needs to be defined Knowledge of ICS roles were strong across the state with few exceptions Need to better define tracking systems for patients being transferred

Live Process A new exercise tool

COMMUNICATIONS First time Live Process was used statewide in all 7 Coalition Regions during an exercise year Provided region wide situation awareness Was used for notification to begin exercise Challenges with Live Process Not using it properly Replying to posts rather than using a new post Using the event board to respond and not the notification system Too much to follow

CST areas For improvement Include Brief Scenario Allow facilities to follow their evacuation plans by allowing patients to be transferred outside the coalition’s geographic boundaries Census numbers cannot be calculated until night before or day of exercise A region’s example – 1 of 3 hospitals evacuating had a 40 patient lower census on day of CST –skewed the region’s overall % of evacuated patients

How did we do? An Objective Overview 14 hospitals evacuated 97% of the states targeted 20% goal of acute care patients within 90 minutes (discharged or transferred) WV hospitals secured enough transportation for all evacuated patients in less than 80 minutes

What’s Next? Completed AARs sent to DHHR Year 5 Year 4 Year 3 Year 2 Year 1 What’s Next? Completed AARs sent to DHHR CTp send State reports to ASPR Work on improvements Begin year 2 - June 1, 2018