Cleveland VA Medical Center, Community Partners Conduct Disaster Exercise

VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System, in partnership with VA Office of Emergency Management recently led a National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Exercise with multiple partners in the community, June 28. The exercise was conducted at the Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport and area hospitals, including the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.

The disaster simulation scenario, staged at the Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport and area hospitals, was based on an inter-agency response to a hurricane landfall in North Carolina which had overwhelmed available hospital beds and staffing. The exercise provided local NDMS partners the opportunity to practice their response to a national disaster which would include large-scale patient transport from the disaster location, local reception of patients, local emergency site preparations, victim triage, patient tracking, and final transport of patients to local community hospitals. Numerous area ambulance and fire department/EMS teams assisted with the transport coordination.

The Cleveland VA Medical Center is one of 65 Federal Coordinating Centers (FCCs) charged to help coordinate patient movement from areas affected by disasters when the hospital capacity in the area is exceeded or a facility is under threat and needs to be evacuated. In the event of a real-world disaster, the Cleveland VA Medical Center may be designated as a site to treat evacuated patients from other areas.

During the exercise, several volunteer individuals played the role of transported patients, exhibiting or describing their assigned symptoms to triage nurses and emergency responders. This helped guide the assignment of patients for transport to designated hospitals who would receive such national emergency patients in a real disaster situation.

The exercise provided critical training for VANEOHS staff and our community partners and allowed a test of the National Disaster Medical System’s processes. Some of the partners involved in the simulation exercise included Cuyahoga County Office of Emergency Management, Cleveland Department of Public Safety, the NDMS participating local hospitals and local FD/EMS and police departments.

“It’s vital that simulations like this be done,” said Rob Jastromb, who served as the Acting Incident Commander during the exercise. “We need to prepare lines of communication and coordination between national, state and the many local entities that would collaborate to meet the many needs arising in the event of an actual disaster situation. This was immensely valuable to all government and organizational participants.”