When ice-ravaged Kentucky sent out a call for help in January, North Carolina met the request by deploying a 15-member group of medical personnel within 24 hours. The deployment, for a total of fourteen days, was split between two teams, each serving one week.
The need for help was sent from the Commonwealth of Kentucky to the State of North Carolina via an Emergency Medical Assistance Compact (EMAC) request; EMAC is a mutual-aid agreement that allows states to help one another during major emergencies affecting more than one state.
The quick response was made possible in part by training, and in part by North Carolina’s ServNC system, which identified the personnel needed and deployed the response teams to Crittenden County, Kentucky, to augment that county’s local hospital staffing.
“This deployment was the first since we’ve organized through ServNC. It showed our system is working,” said Drexdal Pratt, chief of the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services. “I want to thank all who participated in the sharing of these personnel, equipment, and resources for their roles in this important response to Kentucky’s emergency situation.”
The 15 people deployed were divided into two teams, and stayed on the job for a total of two weeks. One team consisted of a team leader, a physician, a physician assistant, five nurses, and a pharmacist. The other consisted of one team leader and five nurses.
Unexpected Developments Show Team’s Diversity
The team’s original mission was to augment medical staffing at the Crittenden County Hospital in the western part of the state. The hospital had “decompressed” its floor beds (by discharging or transferring patients to other facilities in Kentucky and Indiana). However, it maintained an emergency department and outpatient clinic in order to continue to provide services to Crittenden County and a number of other communities in the area.
The North Carolina team augmented staffing in the hospital’s emergency department, pharmacy, and outpatient clinic. During the team’s deployment, however, the facility regained power, after which the team shifted its focus and assisted the hospital in staffing other areas during the so-called “repopulation” phase. While this was going on, the senior decision-making officials on the scene determined that, because the power was restored well ahead of the time anticipated, a full second week of the team’s deployment was no longer needed.
Following discussions with Crittenden County Hospital officials and the Kentucky ESF-8 desk it was determined that the team would continue its deployment, but instead of remaining in Crittenden County would transition to the Livingston County Hospital (just west of Crittenden County) to provide similar services.
Flexibility, Diversity, Adaptability
In addition, the team would be scaled down to only the nurses and the team leader – enough to meet the anticipated needs of the Livingston facility. (Emergency Support Function (ESF) 8 is a mechanism, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), that consolidates, into a single cohesive unit, multiple agencies – from different states or other jurisdictions, for example – performing similar or like functions. Such consolidations not only reduce costs but also improve the overall coordination and management of emergency-response activities and operations.)
On day seven of the overall deployment, as the team in Crittenden County was demobilizing, the second section of the team was arriving in Paducah (in nearby McCracken County) to help fill the needs of Livingston County. As in the first week of the mission, the team members continued to conduct patient care in the nursing areas of the Livingston County Hospital.
As in most disaster deployments the teams were very flexible in their makeup and, in large part for that reason, were called upon to adapt to a wide variety of situations and experiences. The section of the team in Crittenden County, for example, was asked to take on the role of medical surveillance at a local shelter. During this process the team was able, interestingly, to assist the local county emergency and human services staff in establishing a special medical-needs section, within an existing shelter, that was serving as a temporary home for twenty of the Kentucky residents who had taken refuge in the shelter earlier in the disaster that had hit their state.
Timothy Harvey, pandemic influenza coordinator for NCOEMS (and exercise director for METTA II), and John Gaffney of L-3 Communications, Global Security, and Engineering Solutions, who led the Exercise Support Team, provided significant assistance in the preparation of the preceding article.
Ann Marie Brown
Ann Marie Brown, a public health educator and emergency medical technician-paramedic, has been the NCOEMS central region disaster preparedness coordinator for more than six years, and the ESAR-VHP coordinator since December 2006.
Jeffrey B. Peterson
Jeffrey B. Peterson is the emergency-response liaison with NCOEMS and in that post is responsible for coordination with the State Medical Assistance Teams and local EMS agencies in the areas of disaster medicine and emergency response. He has worked in the emergency-services field for 14 years and previously served as an EMS director and regional specialist for NCOEMS. Timothy Harvey, pandemic influenza coordinator for NCOEMS (and exercise director for METTA II), and John Gaffney of L-3 Communications, Global Security, and Engineering Solutions, who led the Exercise Support Team, provided significant assistance in the preparation of the preceding article.
