In response to the threat of intentional and natural mass casualty incidents, numerous efforts are underway at the federal, state, and local levels to strengthen America’s emergency response infrastructure and ensure that the emergency response community is adequately prepared, resourced, and organized to overcome the unique challenges of mass casualty patient care.

One such effort is the development and acquisition of “patient tracking systems” as a means to improve emergency response and preparedness capabilities by electronically capturing and distributing patient information to various stakeholders throughout the continuum of care, such as emergency managers and local hospitals.  While versions of these systems are in various stages of development, at all levels of government and from geographically diverse settings such as Kansas City and the National Capital Region, they have faced similar challenges. These challenges include:

• Acceptance and use: identification of a system that is useful during both day-to-day and mass casualty emergency operations.
• Interoperability: integration into the community’s existing portfolio of emergency application systems.
• Federal compliance: assurance that efforts are compliant with grant requirements (Target Capabilities List) and federal programs such as Electronic Health Records.
• Reinventing wheels: allocation of time and resources to defining requirements, RFPs, and the like.
• Needs of all users: meeting the needs of all relevant agencies for such a system.
• Economics: justification of an investment in a patient tracking initiative.

Phase I | Phase II | Phase III

Patient Tracking in Action

The diagram below illustrates some of the examples of data that could be shared between the various members of the broader emergency response community. The upper two quadrants focus on patient and victim care while the lower two focus on management of the incident. All four quadrants play a role whether the event is a traffic accident, a fire, a flood or a major hurricane.

Click here for a larger view of the chart.

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