Disaster Medical Services System

Standards Development Advisory Group

Meeting Summary – January 10, 2001

Members Attending: Dave Abbott, Rod Chung; David G. Jones; Nancy LaPolla; Carl Schultz; Steve Wood; Kim Zagaris

Other Attendees: Doug Buchanan; Cheryl Starling; Calvin Freeman

Doug Buchanan convened the meeting at 10:00.

Calvin Freeman reviewed the meeting’s agenda.

Announcements

Change in Meeting Schedule. The project will be conducting a workshop on May 9 for local EMS staff and others involved in disaster preparedness. As a result, we will cancel the May 2 meeting, and replace it with a meeting on April 4.

Workshop at EMS Administrators Conference: The May 9 Workshop is designed to orient participants to the standards, obtain their feedback, and introduce them to the guidelines/best practices product. Invitations will be sent to OES coordinators, health officers, and disaster medical services planners.

Proposal to EMS Authority. Mountain-Valley EMS Agency has submitted a proposal to the EMS Authority designed to build upon the work of this project. The proposed project will focus on training and other strategies to promote adoption of the standards by local EMS agencies.

Legislation

Doug Buchanan reported he received correspondence from Babs Jinadu, Health Officer of Kern County requesting the allowance of multiple designees to fill the role of Medical/Health OAC. The consensus of the Advisory Group was that it was important to ensure a single point of contact for disaster medical and health response operations.

Some of the issues raised during the Advisory Group discussion included:

Multiple county LEMSAs: The standards developed by this project require LEMSAs to ensure that local disaster medical systems are capable of serving the residents of the Operational Area. They do not require LEMSAs to develop or implement all of the plans, policies, and procedures needed to meet the standards.

Implementation costs: Almost all LEMSAs are engaged in disaster medical preparedness. The standards generally do not require new activities but promote performing existing activities in a standardized fashion.

The need for the head of the disaster medical services system to be a medical person.

Whether it would be easier to amend existing legislation rather than introduce new legislation.

Regulations

Cheryl Starling reported that she has taken a class and regulations and will start the promulgation process in June. The regulations will be placed under Title XXII, Article IV, Chapter 3 which covers medical disasters or Article II which addresses LEMSA Planning. Most of the language in the current standards is appropriate for regulations.

EMSA will need to define the financial impact of the proposed regulations. The financial impact of all proposed regulations is reviewed by the Department of Finance.

Priorities for Next Meeting

· Legislation.

· Guidelines and best practices.

· Training standards.

· Oversight organization.

Adjourn

After a review of meeting accomplishments and assignments, the meeting was adjourned at 3:00 PM. The next scheduled meeting is March 7, 2001.