Hospitals Practice a Disaster Drill

EAST TEXAS – Today around East Texas, hospitals, EMS and coordinating agencies join together to practice the mass transfer of 200 patients. This would be necessary when evacuating hospitals or nursing homes before or after a hurricane; or if a hospital suffered damage during a weather event. Each hospital will be simulating the actual process of receiving the patients, assessing their condition, treatment plans, and admitting the patient to their facility. And all of this will be coordinated with the various agencies with real time data just as it would be in a disaster evacuation scenario.

While hospitals and EMS agencies do this every day when 1 or 2 patients come in at a time, there is a different process that happens regionally when they have to move 200 patients at a time. The Medical Operations Center known regionally as the G-MOC will be set up in Tyler at the Regional Advisory Council office at 100 East Ferguson Street in Tyler. The function of this team is to manage at a regional level the flow of patients based on how many patients need to be moved and the current available patient beds at each hospital. This will be coordinated in Tyler by the Regional Advisory Council, NETHeath and representatives from the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), Hospitals and EMS agencies.