Appendix 4. Developing an Interactive Response Tool: The HELP Model (continued)
4.0 Interactive Response Tool
Design Document
We chose to use the Department of Homeland Security's National Planning
Scenarios to assure consistency with other preparedness and response efforts
that are being developed. While these scenarios do not cover all possibilities
for health emergencies, they do include a wide spectrum of disasters that communities
could face. Though there are many other potential disaster scenarios that have
been developed, these scenarios have been developed in a very structured manner
and with participation of numerous Federal agencies.
We reviewed all 15 scenarios and determined which could benefit from utilization
of the potential response capabilities of community health call centers. We
then developed a matrix that lists each scenario including expected casualties,
infrastructure damage, evacuation/displacement of persons, sheltering and victim
care strategies. In addition, we determined the necessary potential community
health call center responses. The six potential response capabilities for community
health call centers include providing health information, disease surveillance,
triage/decision support, quarantine/isolation support, outpatient drug information/adverse
event reporting and mental health issues.
We decided to focus our model development on scenarios that: involved great
health impacts, had potential for many "worried well" (those with
little or no injury that could overwhelm health systems), could benefit from
home management/sheltering in place strategies, and included intact community
infrastructure so that call centers would be able to operate. It was determined
that the four biological related scenarios (Biological Attack—Aerosol
Anthrax, Biological Disease Outbreak—Pandemic Influenza, Biological
Attack—Plague, Biological Attack—Food Contamination) afforded
the opportunity to involve all six potential response capabilities for community
health call centers.
The resulting applications are for:
Return to Appendix 4 Contents
4.1 Quarantine/Isolation Monitoring
Application
The QI Monitoring Application should have the capability to automatically
place outbound calls to individuals in home quarantine/isolation to assess
their current health status. The directions given to the quarantined person
should be clear and the person should have the ability to repeat a message.
The application will be designed to accommodate two language selections (English and Spanish)
that the call recipient will select at the beginning of the call.
The application will call the quarantined person at the specified time periods,
provide messages identifying the purpose of the call, require the person to
select an option that reflects their current health status (transferring
them to an information provider for assistance if needed), and provide information
about who to call if assistance is needed before the next monitoring call.
If a person does not answer a call upon the first attempt, the application
will initiate a second call attempt within a defined time period. If the
second call attempt goes unanswered, the application will flag this person
as non-compliant. The QI Monitoring Application will also provide reports
on compliance to further follow-ups can be made by appropriate agencies.
Future scope changes will include ability to dial out 12,000 calls during
a ten-hour period (requiring ten simultaneous outbound calls on IR).
The
following application was the results of modifications following exercises
with the San Luis Valley Region Exercise, October 2005 and the North Central
Region Exercise, May 2006.
Application Data Flow
QI Main Call Flow (English)
QI 2nd Language Call Flow (Spanish)
Announcements
Call Record Table (Example)
Return to Appendix 4 Contents
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