From severe and frequent hurricanes in the south to wildfires in the west, overlaid by the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, public health officials, health systems, and state and local government public health resources have been tested in recent years like never before. On top of the ongoing COVID-19 response continually straining the emergency preparedness and response infrastructure, 2021 is predicted to have the highest average number of Atlantic hurricanes in 30 years of hurricane seasons, with 19 named storms, eight hurricanes, and four major hurricanes.
Following National Hurricane Preparedness week last week and looking ahead to hurricane season starting June 1st, we are reminded that communities and health care organizations must prepare for the public health and medical effects of a growing array of scenarios as well as the potential for several disaster responses to run concurrently.
Audacious Inquiry’s cloud-based clinical care portal for disaster response, the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies™ (PULSE Enterprise), offers new features to ensure that the solution is flexible and scalable to meet any level of organizational need.
Applying Technology to Improve Care Continuity During Disasters
Disasters, and the displacement that results, mean people often travel far from home to reach safety. Although a quick evacuation in times of crisis needs to be the top priority, too often people fleeing from an emergency find themselves in unfamiliar provider networks when they need medical care.
Despite national efforts toward patient-owned, portable medical histories and national health care interoperability, most patients cared for in non-routine emergency settings lack access to information about their clinical history. In most situations, the providers caring for people in these settings are also unable to access critical information to inform the care they provide, or are forced to manually request this information, causing delays in patient care.
Audacious Inquiry has worked with state agencies to design our PULSE Enterprise application, applying industry-standard health IT technology to the disaster response setting. PULSE Enterprise, a cloud-based, scalable software solution, enables authorized users to access medication and clinical histories to improve direct patient care for individuals who are outside their normal healthcare environment. Activated during times of crisis, PULSE Enterprise gives providers the real-time information they need about patients to make informed decisions at the point of care.
Now Available: Customized and Scalable Emergency Response Operations
Emergency response typically involves an incident command structure that may include teams from multiple government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other industry partners. These teams may be well established ahead of any disaster event or may be called upon to deploy in real-time. Just as no two disasters are the same, our disaster response technology must also be scalable and flexible.
In April 2021, enhancements to PULSE Enterprise were introduced to ensure deployment of the product keeps pace with the growing frequency and complexity of emergency response needs, and align with existing response protocols and incident command hierarchies. The new features built into PULSE Enterprise offer our disaster response partners additional flexibility to customize and scale their emergency response operations and deliver effective healthcare in a way that prioritizes patient safety and privacy.
New features in PULSE Enterprise include:
Several levels of administrative and management permissions to better align with organizational response hierarchies.
PULSE Enterprise now supports three levels of management allowing better delegation of select privileges across leading and supporting organizations. These more nuanced user permissions also ensure those with access to the platform only have access to the patient and provider data they need.
Organization-level customization that allows for quicker implementation during a disaster.
Even while supporting the same response, agency administrators can customize the system setup to best represent and serve their own organizational structure and scale. Equipping each responding organization to manage their own users and system permissions smooths on-the-fly and planned deployments when minutes and hours matter.
Easier adoption and in-product data sharing for field staff.
Administrators can grant clinical and administrative field users access to only the locations at which they are working and enable those users to share clinical data on patients in common. This feature facilitates on-site staff coordination while protecting patient and data privacy.
As a leader in healthcare interoperability and emergency preparedness technologies, Audacious Inquiry is continuously working to help states and communities apply modern health information technology capabilities to the unique demands of disaster environments. PULSE Enterprise is specially designed to address patient care gaps currently experienced by emergency responders and public health officials during and after emergencies. As the nation prepares to respond to more frequent disasters, it is imperative that emergency preparedness and response professionals have access to technology that meets their unique care coordination and delivery needs.
For more information on how you can leverage PULSE Enterprise to expand your local, state, or federal disaster response capabilities, visit https://ainq.com/capabilities/software/pulse-enterprise/ or contact Audacious Inquiry’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Business Lead, Lauren Knieser: lknieser@ainq.com.