Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta is employing technology to help manage its emergency department in anticipation of a surge of H1N1 flu cases this fall.
Hospital officials said the wave of H1N1 cases in the spring was manageable.
"The number of ER visits we had were minimal – maybe eight a month," said Charlotte S. Clark, Grady's emergency management manager.
As a regional coordinating hospital, however, Grady was also charged with distributing Tamiflu antiviral medicine, and that proved challenging.
"We were heavily impacted by the first wave since the CDC shipped Tamiflu directly to us to roll out to the other participating healthcare organizations in our region," Clark said.
During the spring H1N1 wave, Clark and her team used a Web-based emergency preparedness and incident management platform to communicate with hospitals under its regional charge. The communication tool in the platform, developed by Verona, N.J.-based LiveProcess, provides an event log that emergency management professionals use to manage and share information.
To help Grady Memorial Hospital and other customers, LiveProcess mobilized a nationwide H1N1 event log on Oct. 1. The log includes H1N1-related news from local, federal and global agencies and enables users to exchange information such as current H1N1 status and available supplies and inventory.
Clark said she expects the log will be an important tool in the coming weeks. Grady plans to use it to report bed availability across the region, keep tabs on patient surges and monitor supplies.
"With LiveProcess, we can quickly access data and be able to edit and track as needed when loaned equipment goes out," she said. "Plus, we can use the event log to arrange for the pickup and delivery of needed supplies or equipment and communicate via phone, text or e-mail with key local and state health officials, all at the push of a button."
"The bottom line is this: We are on the front lines of any healthcare crisis," Clark said. "Having the ability to communicate and exchange information in a timely, effective and accurate way is critical to our mission of meeting this or any other large-scale situation head-on. It's what we do best."
LiveProcess is in use in more than 500 facilities nationwide, and is the only disaster preparedness and incident command solution endorsed by the American Hospital Association.
