N4AOF wrote:
> There are "lots of things one can do"
> on a regular basis, but emergency communications simply is not one
of those
> things.

I still disagree, and again I lift up Orange County Hospital Disaster
Support Communications System (under ARES) as an example that
hospitals can be a real, regular need that is without doubt
underserved in most urban areas of the country.

> the difference between Emergency Communications versus all these
other kinds
> of Public Service communications
> is the key to the original discussion

Yes, but my message was indeed focused on real emergency
communications opportunities. HDSCS has responded 99 times when
comms were actually down or overloaded at one or more hospitals in
our area. This URL is the story of one of our longer activations,
when a backhoe dug up all phone/internet cabling into and out of
Tustin Hospital.

http://members.aol.com/emcom4hosp/tustin04.html

Let's be clear: When Nurse Nancy at Memorial Hospital can't use her
phone to get stat medication orders or patient admitting instructions
from Dr. Dan at his office, it's a real communications emergency.
That's just one example of the kinds of messages that HDSCS hams
handle in our activations.

> Unfortunately my observation has generally been that ham
> radio involvement with such agencies is mostly just on paper. "The
Plan"
> includes ham radio support -- but the agencies rarely drill the
plan and
> when they do the ham radio support is either not played or is
played
> separately from the agency activities.

I have to agree that it's generally true. But HDSCS has chosen to do
better in our 153 drills to date. We participate in all the drill
planning meetings at the table with the hospital and EMS officials.
We usually have the hospitals perform the actual ham callout as part
of the drill, to test our activation procedures. When our hams are
at the hospitals on drill day, they are shoulder-to-shoulder with the
staff in the hospital Command Centers and other hospital units. We
pass THEIR drill messages, not stuff we make up for ourselves. We
actively participate in the critiques afterwards. And so on...

Why don't more ham emergency groups do this? Well, it's lots of
extra work. Most hams don't realize the importance and value of
doing it, so they don't. I think NRCEV could help to change this
attitude.

By the way, we do almost all of our own training, based on our real
experiences. That's another advantage of spending a lot of time "in
the arena." We have an annual 8-hour workshop, regular training
meetings, and a new Certified Hospital Communicator level that
requires experience, training and testing to achieve.

> In the rare instances where NDMS would be used, by definition, it
would
> not involve emergency communications, because NDMS is activated in
an
> unaffected area to receive casualties coming from a disaster

Let's think outside the box and remember that receiving large numbers
of casualties will put a BIG stress on comms of the receiving
hospitals and the EMS agencies in the receiving areas. Below my
signature is our Web writeup of HDSCS participation in a major NDMS
drill involving nine hospitals and the Joint Forces Training Base at
Los Alamitos. As you can see, ham radio did have an important role
to play, as it would if the scenario were to actually happen. This
fact and our importance to smoothly-flowing communications was
recognized by both the hospitals and by NDMS officials at the
critique.

73,
Joe Moell K0OV
Assistant Coordinator, HDSCSC
----------------------------------
Drill #142: HDSCS was a key participant in the National Disaster
Medical System (NDMS) drill on November 19, 2005. If large numbers
of military casualties ever overwhelm the overseas military medical
system, NDMS will coordinate their transportation and distribution to
civilian stateside hospitals. This system may also transport victims
to Orange County hospitals if there were large numbers of civilian
casualties from a catastrophic incident in another region of the
USA. NDMS would be activated following a major incident in our area
that overwhelms our hospital capacities and requires patients to be
moved to other regions of the country. Orange County, because of its
excellent EMS planning and backup support to hospitals (which
includes HDSCS), is near the top of the national list for receipt of
NDMS casualties. Because we have activation plans already in place,
have established familiarity with the hospitals and are trained to be
portable and flexible, HDSCS is considered to be an important
resource if Orange County hospitals and county EMS were to become
officially activated by NDMS. This drill simulated the air transport
of approximately 90 stabilized patients into the Joint Forces
Training Base at Los Alamitos for distribution among OC hospitals.
Because notification of such transport is made one day in advance,
HDSCS operators were in place at nine hospitals and at JFTB when the
patients touched down. HDSCS provided up-to-the-minute ambulance
transport notification to each hospital. At the same time, Chapman
Hospital simulated an external telephone system failure and HDSCS
provided backup communications, including a message to a sister
facility to obtain endotrachial tubes. Bruce Chappell KE6TSM, Roman
Kamienski KG6QMZ and Dennis Kidder WA6NIA communicated from the
JFTB. At the hospitals were Jerry Drukin AC6FC, Bob Evans W6TQC,
Mark Kern KE6QXF, Jim McLaughlin AB6UF, Joe Moell K0OV, David Mofford
W7KTS, Art Rios KD6LBV, Ken Simpson W6KOS, Richard Soikkeli WD6ERY,
Clay Stearns KE6TZR, Scott Stys KG6LJY, Alex Valdez KG6WKK, Fred
Wagner KQ6Q, John Walker AC7GK, Corky Walker KG6YWY, Woody Woodward
KJ6LE, Larry Zysman N6BNM. Net controls were Jack Hafner KO6IC and
April Moell WA6OPS.