# MCI at Hospital



## emtdansby (Jul 14, 2013)

Ok, a couple of weeks back we had one of our local hospitals call dispatch and request every available unit to respond. The power at the hospital had gone out and the main generator failed, leaving the entire facility running on a small backup generator. I was the On Duty Supervisor for my company that day and arrived at the facility about 1 hour after the initial call. I had one of my field supervisor on a unit near by and she was able to set up an initial incident command. Two other services responded to the facility to help. Upon my arrival, I found that the field supervisor was the only person that had made contact with the facility. The main issue at the facility was the lack of diagnostic equipment, CT, X-ray even CBGs. Since no supervisor from the other services responded, I decided to take control of all EMS resources on scene. I have to say I was very surprised at the willingness of the other services to take orders from a competing companies supervisor. Has anyone had a similar experience?


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## DesertMedic66 (Jul 14, 2013)

Yep. During hurricane sandy most of our evacuations from hospitals were lead by a BC from FDNY. We have well over 20 different companies all working together under the direction of the FDNY member.


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## Mariemt (Jul 14, 2013)

Well had they not it would have been unprofessional and wrong.


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## Chimpie (Jul 14, 2013)

How many patients were transported?
How long did the process take?
How did you track the transfers?
How many receiving facilities were there?


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## emtdansby (Jul 14, 2013)

The situation lasted the entire weekend, Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Well
over 75 patient were transported, the facility went on EMS divert and also was able to get a large tractor trailer generator in Saturday morning to run the main floors of the hospital. The only services they were not able to provide were CT, X-ray, surgery, Cath lab and they were not taking in any more patients, so we transported any walk-ins to two sister facilities. Pretty small MCI, but it was a good learning experience for my employees.


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## emtdansby (Jul 14, 2013)

We tracked our transports thru dispatch records and also kept a hard record of all patients transported. On the hard record we wrote done where the patient came from, what service transported them, where they were going and why they needed to be transferred. Getting information to our dispatch involved a lot of time on the phone, during a small debriefing, we have come up with a better way of getting information to dispatch and keeping a more detailed record of transports.


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## DrParasite (Jul 14, 2013)

emtdansby said:


> I have to say I was very surprised at the willingness of the other services to take orders from a competing companies supervisor.


why?  someone has to be in charge...

it's no different than going mutual aid to a big fire, and having another fire officer running the show.  Even if you don't like that department, if their chief gives an order, follow it.

someone needs to be in charge of the EMS resources.  You are a supervisor, and i'm guessing when you arrived, no one else was running the show.  Good for you for establishing some type of command.  All too often EMS personnel have a hard time being supervisors and running a scene, vs getting too involved in individual aspects of it.

I've been on quite a few incidents where there was no EMS person actually managing the EMS resources, and it became a free for all.  they usually turn out to be major CFs....


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## Fortion (Aug 26, 2013)

i think by seeing the situation that was unprofessional


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