May 19th, 2012
Emergency Services Can’t Save Your Life Without This Card
If you’ve ever been a drive-by gawker at a serious vehicle accident, or visited an accident victim in a hospital, no doubt you thought to yourself, “Thank God, I’m glad that didn’t happen to me.” For the moment that’s the good news. The bad news is the fact that 75% of the population is totally unprepared for the the time it might easily happen to them or an immediate family member.
What is it that makes people count on hope, or even worse, the assumption that tragedies will invariably happen to another person? Who can predict when a serious accident or illness will happen to themselves or their family? Not you. Not anyone. So it would be wise to leave your assumptions or apathy at the door, every day and night, before going through it into the dangerous world we live in.
Since accidents are unforeseen and quite often life-threatening, it is paramount to have three things with you all the time: identification, medical information and contact information for next-of-kin.
Think about it. What if you are unconscious or not able to communicate in a very serious accident? That means emergency services will have absolutely no way of knowing your medical history, medications, blood type, allergies, or anything else that could help them save your life. Furthermore, they won’t know who to call about your trouble if you’re able to tell them.
Medical emergency professionals report that it requires about six hours to contact family in cases of emergency sometimes several days. Having a medical emergency ID card, family notification takes only a few minutes, not hours or days.
The most effective strategy to having medical and contact information when they are needed most, is to always carry a medical emergency ID card that gives access to a database of medical and family contact information for first responders. By calling a toll free telephone number on the card, emergency call center agents can immediately assist first responders at the scene. Agents can provide life-saving medical data to first responders before contacting the victim’s family on file. Emergency preparedness not only saves lives, but relieves the worry, uncertainty, and agony of those who wait to hear something about where their family member is, or what has happened to delay their expected arrival.
A medical emergency ID card helps paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), nurses and doctors immensely in their efforts to stabilize unconscious patients and save their lives. This simple but powerful plastic card enables call center agents to communicate for victims whenever they can’t to ensure medical personnel can do no harm while treating them.
One of the most important components of protection afforded by an emergency ID card is the prevention of adverse drug reactions or ADR. With more than 2 million serious, adverse drug reactions annually, ADRs account for approximately 100,000 deaths annually. Researchers have determined that ADRs are now the fourth leading death in the United States after cardiovascular disease, cancer, and stroke. This tragic event could be prevented for the bearer of an medical emergency ID card.
Medical emergency ID cards do more than save lives whenever a serious accident or illness occurs. They offer priceless reassurance and improve the quality of life for families before ever happens.
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May 19th, 2012
RANDOLPH, Kan. – Last Friday’s 911 outage that affected parts of northern Riley County was the focal point of Thursday’s county commission meeting at Randolph City Hall.
This was only a land-line issue for Twin Valley Telephone users. The problem was corrected a few hours after the outage was discovered; however, no one was promptly told when the issue had been resolved.
“We weren’t notified when it went back up,” Emergency Management Director Pat Collins said. “That caused some confusion. The outage happened on Friday and we didn’t find out until Monday that it was back up.”
After last Friday’s episode, the Emergency Management Department is adjusting protocol to prepare for another such outage.
“We’re updating our plan which encompasses all of the different ways that 911 may go down or we may lose our phone system,” Collins said.
The updated plan will focus largely on educating citizens of Riley County.
“If you pick your phone up and it doesn’t work, then you need to expect that 911 isn’t working,” “You need to know where your local emergency services are and how to contact emergency services if your phone doesn’t work or if 911 doesn’t work.”
Collins also suggested that citizens examine the county’s Immediate Response Information System (IRIS) service, which can send out pertinent emergency information via text message, email, or phone call.
***
A recent discovery by the Emergency Management Department revealed that three tornado sirens failed to work during a round of storms that hit the area in mid-April.
The sirens have since been fixed, but Collins admits it wasn’t the quickest process.
“Some of the sirens are really old,” Collins said. “We bought them as surplus property and we’ve only got one vendor in the area that can actually repair those (sirens).”
Siren issues are infrequent according to Collins, who added that he does not expect any problems in the short-term.
***
The Riley County Commission learned that it will have to wait a few extra weeks before it receives the Kansas Attorney General’s opinion on the renewal of the county’s half cent sales tax.
The work is now being handled by the assistant Attorney General.
“It’s going to be circulated within that office,” County Counselor Clancy Holeman said. “They’re predicting one to two weeks after that is when an opinion might be generated.”
Holeman is tentatively expecting to receive a response by June 1.
The sales tax question is expected to go back before the voters during Fall 2012 elections.
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May 16th, 2012
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May 16th, 2012
 
Written by Kevin Kerrigan
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 10:10
Guam News –
Guam News
Guam – Congresswoman Bordallo is raising concerns that GovGuam is using Guam taxpayer funds to pay for certain emergency services for compact migrants and not using federal dollars available to the island.
In separate letters to Governor Eddie Calvo and Assistant DOI Secretary Tony Babauta, Bordallo points out that more than $4.5 million in Medicaid funds allocated for Guam were left un-spent between 2009 and 2011.
In her letter to Governor Calvo, Bordallo points out that Public Health has been using locally funded Medically Indigent Program [MIP] funds instead of federal Medicaid funds for certain emergency services provided to Compact migrants.
She asks the Governor to consider changes to allow Public Health to use those Medicaid funds, instead of Guam’s MIP money, to cover emergency treatment for migrants from the Freely Associated States [FAS].
READ Congresswoman Bordallo’s letter to Governor Calvo HERE
In her letter to Babauta, Congresswoman Bordallo asks for clarification on “the specific circumstances under which Compact migrants would be eligible for emergency Medicaid coverage.”
READ Congresswoman Bordallo’s letter to DOI Secretary Babauta HERE
READ Bordallo’s release in FULL below:
Bordallo Asks Governor Calvo to Consider Changes to Medicaid Processing to Include Coverage for Compact Migrants
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 15, 2012 – Washington, D.C. –
Congresswoman Madeleine Z. Bordallo today sent a letter to Governor Calvo requesting that he consider changes to the Medicaid program on Guam that may allow the Department of Public Health and Social Services (DPHSS) to provide Medicaid coverage for emergency medical treatment for otherwise eligible migrants from the Freely Associated States.
According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), more than $4.5 million in federal Medicaid funds available to Guam between Fiscal Years 2009 and 2011 were left unspent. These excess funds were the result of increases in Guam’s Medicaid cap secured by Congresswoman Bordallo within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a provision offered by Congresswoman Bordallo that increased Guam’s Medicaid cap from $13.7 million in FY10, to $24 million in FY11, to $42 million in FY12. This cap will continue to increase to $58 million in FY19, nearly tripling federal Medicaid dollars available to Guam.
In her letter to Governor Calvo, the Congresswoman noted that DPHSS has not filed any Medicaid claims for emergency services provided to otherwise eligible Compact migrants, and instead provides coverage for these services through the locally-funded Medically Indigent Program (MIP). She noted that medically necessary dialysis treatment qualifies as an emergency service under CMS regulations, one of the primary health care costs for Compact migrants on Guam. Shifting coverage for these services from MIP to Medicaid would make the federal government responsible for meeting 55 percent of the cost and realizing significant savings in Guam’s local health care dollars.
The Congresswoman also sent a letter to Assistant Secretary Babauta of the Department of the Interior today to request his assistance in clarifying the specific circumstances under which Compact migrants would be eligible for emergency Medicaid coverage.
“For far too long, our island has been responsible for bearing the financial burden of providing healthcare to Compact migrants. Increases in Guam’s Medicaid cap have made it possible to shift some of that burden back to the federal government where it belongs. However, without changes to Guam’s Medicaid program, our local government will continue to carry the majority of this burden unnecessarily,” said Congresswoman Bordallo.
“Recent attempts in the House to cut critical Medicaid funding for the territories demonstrate the need for our local leaders to work together to make the most of federal funds available to our island. I am working with Governor Calvo and Secretary Babauta to find a way to better target the spending of our Medicaid funds on Guam so that they go further within our community and mitigate the financial burden of providing medical coverage for migrants from the Freely Associated States.”
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May 13th, 2012
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May 13th, 2012
This is the third of a number of videos made at the Brooklands Emergency Vehicle Mayday Event in 2012. I am afraid this video is slightly spoiled by the microphone picking up background noise, we hope this does not spoil your enjoyment too much. It shows in details a few of the many Historic Police vehicles, parading in the Brooklands Paddock.
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May 13th, 2012
ITHACA, N.Y.: With the numbers of overweight Americans continuing to increase, emergency services have been responding to more and more calls for obese patients. Bangs Ambulance, of Ithaca, new York has been investing in new equipment to make it easier to transport heavier patients, and safer for the Bang’s crew.
The Center for Disease Control says that over two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and those numbers are continuing to rise. Overweight people are at a higher risk of heart disease, and diabetes along with many other ailments. this increases the need for ambulances that can accommodate larger patients. Traditionally, bariatric stretchers have been used in these situations. President of Bangs Ambulance, Tim Bangs, said bariatric stretchers can hold up to 1600 pounds, but are strenuous on the emergency crew responding to the call. Bangs said it is much easier to use the new Stryker stretchers that Bangs Ambulance began using last year.
Stryker stretchers are not as wide as a bariatric stretcher and can only hold up to 750 pounds, but they can lift or lower a patient with the push of a button, Bangs explained. “This is historically a backbreaking job. (With a bariatric stretcher) You have to lift the entire stretcher, hold it up, and push it in while your partner guides it in the ambulance.”
Eddie Wilson, the new York – Pennsylvania Territory Manager for Stryker, said EMS is one of the three most injury – causing occupations. Wilson continued that these injuries are not caused by the occasional morbidly obese patient, but by the repeated lifting of the average patient. Since the average weight of American’s continues to rise, routine lifting becomes more strenuous. “Almost every one of my customers have dealt with a patient over 500 pounds, but the real problem is that the average weight for a patient now is around 230 pounds.” Wilson said.
Bangs Ambulance decided last year to purchase these new stretchers after the numbers of obese patients continued to increase.
“Before it would be pretty odd if we saw a patient that was 350 pounds. We would need to call an extra person to help us lift them. now we’re starting to see 450 -500 pound patients regularly and a two-person crew can do that comfortably” Bangs said.
He continued by saying that the main problem now is getting patients out of their homes. Even though the new stretchers can help get patients into or out of an ambulance, it is sometimes much more difficult to move a patient outside.
One of the crew members for Bangs, Traci, said that although moving obese patients onto stretchers is a challenge, she has never had a big problem occur. “I’ve never experienced a problem trying to transport an obese patient. if we need an extra set of hands there are usually firemen at the scene or we can call down for additional resources.”
The new Stryker stretchers are about twice as expensive as a traditional stretcher. Bangs said they cost about $13,000 as opposed to a normal stretcher that would cost $6,000. The real payoff for ambulance companies is the reduced number of injured employees. Bangs said since they purchased these new stretchers, their number of workers compensation claims has dramatically decreased. “We pay upfront for the stretchers, but they pay for themselves in the end” he said.
Eddie Wilson said that Stryker’s goal is to reduce the number of injuries to EMS workers. “If we can remove the repetition of lifting heavy patients over-and-over, we can keep the emergency crews from straining their backs.”
The other benefit comes from sending a smaller crew to the scene. Bangs explained that even if a larger crew is needed for an obese patient, they don’t charge the patient extra. “Other people are starting to have a different class of billing for a bariatric patient. if you weigh more than 450-500 pounds and they need to send additional crew members, they will get billed more.” Bangs said. However, Ithaca is nowhere near adopting a policy like this. For now, the new stretchers allow a smaller crew to be sent to the scene, and therefore less money is spent.
The Effects of Obesity on Emergency Services: Bangs Ambulance
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May 13th, 2012
An Online News of KALIMPONG PRESS CLUB
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May 9th, 2012
New communication & computer systems, streamlined processes
Press Release from Orange & Rockland Utilities
Wednesday, O&R announced major changes to improve the company’s response and performance during devastating storms by enhancing communications systems, upgrading computer applications and systems and streamlining its processes and information flow.
O&R’s President and CEO Bill Longhi said, “The bottom line objective is for customers to be able to better provide and receive outage and damage-related information and for the company to use that information to accelerate its restoration efforts.”
O&R Vice President for Operations Francis Peverly led the internal task force of 15 experts from disciplines across the Company. The task force’s work in part was guided by feedback from extensive O&R outreach to public officials, the emergency services community, customers and employees in the wake of Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm, the most destructive storms ever to hit O&R.
Highlights of the new program include:
- New and upgraded automated telephone call and information processing systems that have the capability to handle both normal storms and extreme weather events like those that occurred last autumn.
- Enhanced computer systems and applications that take the data from those calls and turn it into repair assignments and outage reports,
- A next-generation web and mobile-web based Outage Map application that features the visual display of outages down to the single-service level,
- New predictive algorithms and supporting systems analysis to provide for more accurate and consistent projected electric service restoration times and
- A new storm-response blueprint designed to improve the mobilization, deployment and management of field repair resources.
O&R already has implemented many of these improvements, and the remainder will be phased in over the next several months. In addition, further improvements are planned for the remainder of the year.
Longhi said, “This program doesn’t mean customers will not have another power outage when a natural disaster hits. This program means that when a natural disaster strikes, O&R customers can better communicate better with us, we can communicate better with them, including giving them a clearer idea of when their power will be restored, and that our overall restoration process will be more efficient.”
Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm were the most destructive storms to ever hit O&R. Hurricane Irene cut power on Sunday, Aug. 28 to over 120,000 of O&R’s 300,000 electric customers or about 40 percent of the utility company’s electric customer base. On Oct. 29, the October snowstorm — the worst weather event ever to hit the O&R electric system — dumped as much as 19 inches of snow in some communities, knocking out power to more than 134,000 O&R customers.
In both disasters, the sheer extent of damage to the communities’ infrastructure and the O&R electric system, impeded O&R damage assessment, blocked access to many damage locations and slowed extremely labor-intensive repair work. The volume of customer calls and outage reports caused by each disaster overloaded utility systems throughout the region. O&R’s call center and customer information computer systems were no exception and were not capable of handling the call volume these disasters generated.
Peverly said, “We took a hard look at the lessons learned from Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm, combined them with the newest in technology and emergency-response thinking, and built a platform from which we can successfully respond to the next disaster and the disaster after that.”
Details of the new program include:
Enhanced Ability to Answer Calls. O&R’s telephone system typically processes 800,000 calls per year. The same system received 266,000 calls in one week during the snowstorm and 210,000 in one week during Hurricane Irene. The peak volume of calls per hour reached 12,000 in each storm (7,000 were unique calls; the other 5,000 were repeat calls).
To address that issue, O&R has installed a new automated call answering service administered by Twenty-First Century Communications, Inc. (TFCC), an industry leader in call-center solutions. In an emergency situation, O&R will activate that system and the service will route the calls to an interactive voice response (IVR) system. There, the customer will receive a message with information about the event and will have the opportunity to report an outage and immediately receive Estimate Restore Time (ERT) information for their account if it is available. O&R also expanded its daily customer call system from 92 incoming lines to 368 incoming lines.
Transforming Data Into Information. To process the volume of data from the expanded incoming call lines, O&R also has expanded its Outage Management System (OMS). An improved computer program will transform data from automated calls into repair assignments and outage reports.
The information also will go to an updated Outage Map which, in response to emergency services and customer concerns, will display the street locations of single service outages that affect one customer as well as circuit outages which affect multiple customers. In addition to providing customers with a description of the cause of the outage, the Outage Map will be optimized for use on IPad and IPhone and Android phones.
For the approximately 30 percent of O&R customer callers who prefer to report their outages to a person, O&R also has initiated a plan by which overflow calls during a high-volume period would be automatically transferred to 100 Con Edison customer service representatives who will answer those calls and process outage information.
In addition, to provide an added level of reliability to the customer calling system, O&R is contracting for another TFCC service called MARS (Mutual Assistance Routing System), which taps excess customer service call-answering capacity at other utilities for those utilities that need them for high-volume call situations. This permits O&R to offer even more trained utility company customer service representatives to help those customers who wish to speak personally to a representative.
As part of its effort to more fully serve its customers, particularly during storms and other emergencies, O&R has embarked upon a campaign to obtain up-to-date primary and alternate phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The more contact information O&R has, the quicker it can identify a customer’s account, and the quicker it can help that customer. With the up-to-date primary phone numbers and alternates on file, O&R can identify customers’ accounts as soon they call. L
To better communicate more fully with customers, O&R also has contracted with TFCC for its Alert system. Alert, which is under development and is expected to be online this summer, is a high-speed, high-volume outbound notification system that lets the company send time-sensitive information to customers or employees on virtually any electronic device. With Alert, O&R can send targeted messages to select groups or geographic areas by landline, cell phone, VoIP phone, PDA, pager, text, e-mail, fax and TTY/TDD machines. Alert also integrates with Twitter and other social media platforms.
More Accurate Service Restoration Times. Until now, damage assessment had been the key factor in how O&R estimates service restoration times. Now, O&R will be refining that process by integrating damage assessment data into a formula that includes a number of other variables such as weather forecasts, storm path location, season, foliage, temperature and time of storm arrival, pre-storm resource planning, and historical knowledge and experience from prior storms combined with initial reports on the storm’s severity (number of incidents, number of customers) to more fully develop a comprehensive picture of a storm’s impact. That analysis will guide O&R in the development of its workforce mobilization timetables, and its equipment and staffing deployment, and as a result, more fully inform its decision-making and strategy about repair, restoration and recovery.
Once the extent of the event is determined and a solution is plotted and time-lined, the Estimated Restore Times (ERTs) are set. Those ERTs then will be communicated to the public through the full range of O&R communications channels.
Improved Storm Plan Structure and Process. In addition to customer information and communication system improvements, O&R examined every aspect of the Storm Plan from its organization protocols and activation timing to its staffing needs and its cooperative relationships with state, county and local agencies.
As a result of that intensive study, a number of steps are being taken to streamline this process including a revision of the Incident Command Structure (ICS) to organize the overall effort better, the creation of a municipal storm priority matrix to help clear downed wires and open key roads quicker, the adoption of an improved incident information process for police and fire departments to report damage sites more completely and the development of alternate equipment and personnel staging locations that are closer to the damage to help make the actual repair, restoration and recovery process faster.
That revision also includes new protocols designed to activate more internal and external storm response resources sooner, to create a wider span of control over those resources to utilize them more fully and to tap more quickly materials and staffing resources available from Consolidated Edison of New York, O&R’s sister company in the Consolidated Edison, Inc. family of companies.
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May 9th, 2012
The National Weather Service has issued a Frost Advisory for tonight, Thursday, May 10th, from 12a-8a tomorrow.
Temperatures are expected to be as low as 30-34 degrees overnight.
While, this isn’t a significant threat to humans, you may have been doing some recent gardening that might suffer under these temperatures. So, be aware and prepare for all of the fun twists and turns that weather in the Pacific Northwest provides.
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