Tracking First Responders with HC Standard

Augusta, GA (PRWEB) September 28, 2014

Global Emergency Resources’ flagship application, HC Standard®, is a flexible and intuitive solution designed to help first responders track patients and their medical conditions during all types of events. HC Standard® was showcased during the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office’s Urban Shield 2014 exercise in the San Francisco Bay Area. “It was our most successful EMR venture yet. We managed to avoid Google Docs for the first year ever,” says Dave Lipin, Urban Shield Medical Unit Leader.

Urban Shield is a 48-hour, comprehensive full-scale regional preparedness exercise, involving all first responder disciplines. A major component is a tactical event involving 35 SWAT and tactical teams from around the world. These teams rotate through 35 scenarios over the 48-hour period, including 4 medical checkpoints. Medical information such as vital signs and treatments were collected and monitored throughout the event at these checkpoints, as well as through roaming medical checks, and was shared with leadership in the Medical Departmental Operation Center. HC Standard® was the system used by Urban Shield leadership to electronically collect and share this medical assessment information with authorized levels of command staff.

Val Bilotti, Urban Shield Medical Branch Chief described the medical tracking system for 2014: "HC Standard was T & E'd (trial & error) during Urban Shield 2014. The program was customized to meet the needs of an event with seven medical assessment assets over 792 square miles to ensure we provided the best quality care to our first responders. The program was well received by clinical staff and was easy to implement with real time training that is invaluable in a real world emergency."

Each medical checkpoint had at least one smart phone or tablet with the HC Standard Patient Tracking™ application installed. At each participant’s medical assessment, the participant’s tracking barcode was scanned with the mobile device and medical data was entered. The initial medical checkpoint also used the driver’s license scanning feature to import demographic data on each participant.

In addition to entering medical data at each medical checkpoint, staff could view incoming participants along with their medical history and previous medical assessment data, better preparing the checkpoint for the arrival of the next team.

The system continuously tracked 280 participants. Of these 280 operators, 34 participants were placed on a watch list at different intervals during the event. HC Standard® allowed medical leadership to monitor participants closely and provided historical charting, reporting, and near real-time updates of their recent medical assessments.

About GER: About Global Emergency Resources: Global Emergency Resources (GER), headquartered in Augusta, GA, (http://ger911.com^[1]), is a software solution developer and integrator for the emergency response and healthcare industries. GER’s HC Standard® software suite allows first responders and receivers to manage various EMS, hospital and clinical databases, and provides near real-time monitoring and mapping of healthcare systems and assets during emergencies and routine daily operations. GER offerings include disaster management software, exercises and training services, as well as field mobility solutions that can support patient triage, tracking, reunification and hospital surge planning and compliance.

About Urban Shield: Urban Shield 2014, a planned training exercise involving local, national, and international first responder agencies. Urban Shield is a unique tactical training exercise involving thousands of hours of planning and preparation. The event allows participating agencies a practical opportunity to evaluate their tactical team’s level of preparedness and ability to perform a variety of intricate first responder operations. The dual benefit of this event allows each agency to evaluate its own tactical capabilities while training together with EMS, Fire, and EOD to identify our ability to cope with large-scale events at a Regional level. http://www.urbanshield.org^[2]

References

1. ^{^}http://ger911.com (www.prweb.net)
2. ^{^}http://www.urbanshield.org (www.prweb.net)