In October, two phone calls sparked one of ASPR’s Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS) sites, managed by Nebraska Medicine in partnership with University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), to become deeply involved in the RSV-driven patient surges hospitals faced in Region 7 (Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas). The calls came from a hospital in Nebraska and one in Missouri because their facilities were out of pediatric beds, and as a result healthcare providers had to add alternative spaces and board pediatric patients in the hospitals’ emergency departments.
Could the RDHRS help? Yes.
At the time, the RDHRS – called the Regional Disaster Health Response Ecosystem (RDHRE) – and hospitals in Region 7 did not have insight into the number of pediatric beds in the region. For the next three months the staff supporting the RDHRE - in addition to busy schedules for their regular medical center jobs - hosted coordination and information exchange calls with rural, critical access, and larger acute care hospitals to meet the surge in demand for pediatric care in the region. The calls grew by word of mouth and networking within the region, ultimately bringing together 22 Midwest hospitals.
The group shared daily reports on bed availability and on medication and supplies shortages. Some of the larger healthcare systems in the region offer in-house transport teams for patients, including children, who need acute care. Awareness of bed and transport team availability enabled hospitals in the region to share these in-house transport teams when needed.
By networking, they were able to map staffed pediatric beds and points of contact for each facility. That information is now part of the region’s specialty care dashboard which includes trauma and burn care. The RDHRE also leveraged social media to provide information to healthcare providers such as educational and training opportunities and resources including promising practices.
The experience demonstrated that creating a healthcare ecosystem for emergency response requires strong relationships. The RDHRE did not affect referral patterns or dictate which hospitals took which patients, although making health system connections enabled the hospitals to make those decisions amongst themselves. Sharing which resources were open, and filling information gaps enabled faster patient care and, in some cases, allowed for care that would not have been available otherwise. This approach, the RDHRE staff says, saves lives.
The RDHRE also shared information with Region 7 state health departments and ASPR. Over the three months, that insight indicated that state and federal support, such as federal medical teams or Medicare waivers to ensure hospital access for Medicare beneficiaries, were not needed.
As the pediatric surge slowed, calls and reports scaled back, ending when the surge ended in December, but RDHRS sites around the country continue to build partnerships to enhance preparedness at the regional level. In addition to Region 7, ASPR funds the following demonstration sites:
- Region 1 RDHRS based at Massachusetts General Hospital (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont),
- Region 4 Southern Regional Disaster Response System (SRDRS) based at Emory University (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee), and
- Region 8 Mountain Plains RDHRS based at Denver Health and Hospital Authority (Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming).
Before the next disaster strikes in your community, reach out to the RDHRS in your region and learn about best practices and resources you can use to protect patient health in an emergency.
