Information for Health Organizations

Health organizations whose employees are eligible to volunteer through ESAR-VHP can offer key resources in times of disasters and public health emergencies. By encouraging employees to register with ESAR-VHP, organizations help ensure qualified medical assistance is available during a disaster or public health emergency.

Organizations that are responsible for securing additional health professionals during a response can request help with identifying professionals with the specific skillsets that they need to better serve their community. State, territorial, and freely associated state ESAR-VHP systems can then match the best volunteer candidates to each job.

Credential Levels

ESAR-VHP volunteers can be an important part of your organization's disaster response plan.   ESAR-VHP registers health care professionals with a wide range of skillsets and professional backgrounds. To effectively identify and deploy health professionals with varying levels of clinical competency, ASPR developed a uniform process for classifying and assigning volunteers registered with ESAR-VHP into one of four credential levels, based on the credentials provided and verified.

Level 1	Clinically active in a hospital, either as an employee or by having hospital privileges.
Level 2	Clinically active in a wide variety of settings, such as clinics, nursing homes, and shelters.
Level 3	Meet the basic qualifications necessary to practice in the state or territory in which they are registered.
Level 4	Possess experience or education that would be useful for assisting clinicians and providing basic healthcare not controlled by the scope of practice laws (e.g., may include health professions students or retired health professionals who no longer hold an active license).

Assigning volunteer health professionals to these different levels:

• Reduces the credential verification burden for emergency care delivery
• Allows personnel to be allocated according to need
• Permits volunteers to be used at their highest capacity
• Facilitates sharing of volunteer personnel

Partner with Your Jurisdiction's ESAR-VHP

When disaster strikes, organizations (e.g., acute care hospital, emergency medical services provider, emergency management agency, emergency shelter, public health agency, or other health care entity) need to be prepared to save lives and serve the health needs of their communities. ESAR-VHP can help your organization increase the number of staff available to mitigate surge and protect the public's health during disasters and public health emergencies.

In the event of a disaster or public health emergency, organizations may require additional personnel to mitigate the impact of surge on the health care workforce. Alternately, organizations may have personnel available that can support other facilities or organizations. ESAR-VHP encourages health professionals to register in advance of a disaster or public health emergency so they can easily offer their medical expertise during a response. ESAR-VHP helps jurisdictions coordinate across facilities and health care organizations to identify health care workforce needs and distribute volunteer health professionals where they are needed most.

Partner Resources

There are several ways organizations can share information about ESAR-VHP with health professionals. For example, organizations can include information in partner or volunteer opportunity sections on their website or include a call for volunteers in a member newsletter. To support these efforts, ASPR can provide any of the following materials:

• ESAR-VHP logo
• Banner advertisements
• Program brochures (downloadable)
• Web-ready content with overviews of ESAR-VHP
• Print PSAs
• Newsletter/email content
• Partner drop-in web copy

For more information about partnering with ESAR-VHP and to obtain the materials listed above, e-mail esarvhp@hhs.gov.