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Indiana’s Largest Healthcare Exercise to Take Place in Central Indiana

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District 5 Healthcare Coalition

On November 7th, over 150 area hospitals, health departments, emergency managers and other healthcare partners will participate in an operational emergency exercise. This will be one of the largest healthcare focused exercises ever conducted in the State of Indiana. The District 5 Healthcare Coalition (D5HCC) performs this annual drill to allow healthcare and emergency service organizations the opportunity to test communications, coordination of resources, and activation of their emergency operations plans. The exercise will assess many plans and policies of the area’s healthcare coalition focusing on patient surge activities, incident command, active threats, and evacuation. The District 5 Healthcare Coalition is made up of hospitals, health departments, emergency management, emergency medical services (EMS), long-term care facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, rural health clinics, dialysis centers, home health, hospice and physician offices.

Testing is very important for all types of businesses but especially important for healthcare due to the fact facilities cannot close for severe weather or disasters. Ron Reitenour, the Chair of the healthcare coalition, says these exercises are critical to the development and organization of our healthcare resources. “Many plans are required to care for large numbers of patients during emergencies. Not only do organizations need to practice their own internal response, but as a district, we must evaluate how we can respond collectively for the good of the patients, families, and communities.”

Healthcare facilities are tasked with participating in these emergency preparedness exercises due to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) regulations, however the focus is how to recover as quickly as possible and maintain medical care for each community.

Vantage Point Consulting is proud to be selected to plan, conduct and evaluate this large exercise. Many hours of development and coordination among the healthcare organizations is required to be successful. This planning process includes several volunteers from various Central Indiana healthcare facilities. The objectives and scenarios are based on needs assessments conducted annually by the District 5 Healthcare Coalition.

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