Public Health Emergency Preparedness
This resource was part of AHRQ's Public Health Emergency Preparedness program, which was discontinued on June 30, 2011, in a realignment of Federal efforts.
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8. Example of a Regional Exercise
The unique characteristics of this project were the driving factors for creating and implementing a regional bioevent-based disaster orientation exercise. The members of the RMBT Working Group had collaborated for 8 months discussing regional issues related to bioterrorism surge capacity. Some of the issues were unique to this region, where the population is widely dispersed and the majority of the medical resources are centralized in a few locations.
The collaboration from all levels of government and from various programs also offered unique insight into some of these regional issues. For instance, DoD members were able to share their specialized expertise in mobile disaster medical surge capacity development. These DoD resources may or may not be available for civilian use during a bioterrorist event, based upon other resource obligations the military would be under at the time of the event.
Since medical response will be local during the initial period after an attack, the RMBT Working Group decided to test the mobilization of medical resources across State lines through an orientation exercise during the final phase of the project. This exercise would address some of the concerns by the six States in meeting surge needs in the event of a bioterrorist attack and initially test some of the ideas/solutions developed by the Working Group.
One of the solutions proposed by RMBT to address surge needs was to equip a medical cache or armory that could be mobilized. As discussed in the section on supply options, three levels of supply caches were recommended (hospital augmentation cache, regional alternative care site cache and a comprehensive cache). These caches of medical supplies can be stored in various locations and mobilized to urban or rural areas and across State lines.
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The exercise was an "orientation exercise" (i.e., scoping type exercise) since many of the roles, issues, and caches are still being defined and tested. An outside expert exercise coordinator from the Denver Office of Emergency Management was invited to develop and facilitate the exercise for the Working Group.
The five primary objectives of this exercise were to:
- Determine the appropriate command and control procedures for deploying a mobile medical cache across State lines.
- Using the 3 different levels of supply caches, determine which cache should be deployed and the factors considered.
- Identify the legal limitations to deploying staff and supplies across State lines and potential solutions.
- Determine the level of staffing that will be required and how and from where they will be mobilized.
- Identify the additional supplies and equipment that will be needed, where they will come from, and how they will be mobilized.
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The RMBT Working Group based this exercise on a simple scenario of a biological event occurring in a rural area of this region. Aid was requested from a neighboring State with available caches.
"On August 8, 2003 at 10:15 am, Colorado OEM has received a request from a neighboring State to possibly lend assistance under the EMAC agreement to a small community in their State. The 50-bed Medical Center in the community has become overwhelmed with an outbreak of an unknown diarrhea agent in a large group of motorcycle enthusiasts on their way to Sturgis, South Dakota. Public Health is investigating the possibility of a contaminated wa