Managing simulations and real emergency incidents at St. Joseph’s Health

St. Joseph’s Health, a prominent New Jersey healthcare system established in 1867, provides comprehensive care to its community through a dedicated team of over 5,000 providers and 1,000 physicians.

The team at St. Joseph’s Health is deeply committed to patient care, and that commitment extends to comprehensive emergency preparedness. As a large healthcare system with diverse facilities, including a Level II trauma centre, off-site practices, and an ambulatory care centre, St. Joseph’s faces unique challenges in safeguarding patients, staff, and the community.

Leading the Emergency Management team is Adam Perper, Director of Emergency Management & Preparedness. With over two decades of experience in the field, Adam brings a wealth of knowledge to his role at St. Joseph’s Health.

Manual procedures hindering communication

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the emergency management team at St. Joseph’s recognised the need to revitalise their preparedness strategies. This included thoroughly reassessing existing emergency plans, policies, and resources. A key challenge they identified was the absence of a centralised system for managing and tracking crucial information and assets.

Before adopting emergency management software, St. Joseph’s Health relied on manual methods like pen and paper, which hindered efficient communication and information sharing during critical incidents. Different departments, such as the trauma and emergency departments, often struggled to stay informed about unfolding events. This lack of real-time information hindered their ability to prepare and respond effectively.

Recognising these challenges, St. Joseph’s Health sought a technological solution to bridge these communication gaps and enhance its crisis management capabilities. They needed a platform to centralise information, facilitate seamless collaboration, and empower their teams to make informed decisions quickly.

Effectively tracking all vital services with D4H

By implementing D4H, St. Joseph’s Health has streamlined the workflow and provided the team with a centralised repository for all critical documents, ensuring easy access and version control for emergency plans and policies. Furthermore, it enables the accurate inventory and tracking of emergency supplies and equipment, guaranteeing that essential resources are readily available when needed.

With D4H, St. Joseph’s Health is fostering a more resilient healthcare system, ready to confront any challenge and ensure the ongoing safety of their community.

Coordinate every critical incident

When a serious incident happens, you’re fighting two battles at once. Managing the response and keeping everyone on the same page through scattered email threads and phone calls. D4H fixes that. The situation report is your command centre, a central place for both management and teams on the ground where every update is time stamped and every action is logged automatically. So when the incident is over, your audit trail is already built. D4H forms are live and collaborative. They update in real time, so your team captures critical information in the moment, feeding directly into your incident action plan, ensuring compliance and decision making always move together. Status boards turn your response into a live dynamic system, feeding into a real time dashboard that keeps everything in view. Field updates hit the board the moment they’re made. Priorities shift, tasks get assigned, and your operation stays in motion automatically. With integrated chat, mapping, and a real time dashboard pulling it all together, D4H gives your team the clarity to make faster, better decisions when you need it most. Let us show you what your coordinated response could look like. Book your demo at ecoonline.com today.

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Office of Emergency Management tracker

St. Joseph’s Health takes emergency preparedness seriously. They know that staying ahead of potential crises means having a clear picture of what’s happening at all times. That’s why with D4H Incident Management they’ve used an Incident Dashboard to develop an Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Tracker, a powerful tool that helps them monitor everything from local incidents and hospital diversions to internal meetings and training sessions. The tracker acts as a central hub for all emergency-related information.

This tracker isn’t just about reacting to events as they unfold; it’s about proactive planning and preparation. For instance, during the winter months, St. Joseph’s uses the OEM Tracker to monitor “Code Blue” alerts, which are activated when temperatures drop below freezing.

This allows them to coordinate with community partners who open warming shelters and ensure vulnerable populations are protected. They also keep tabs on nearby hospitals, tracking diversions and service disruptions to anticipate potential surges in patient volume.

The OEM Tracker also helps St. Joseph’s manage day-to-day operations within their emergency management team. By centralising information about critical units, department contacts, and meeting schedules, it streamlines communication and ensures everyone has access to the information they need, exactly when they need it. This level of organisation and preparedness allows the team to respond effectively to any challenge and prioritise the safety of their community.

Managing everything from attendance to follow-up with the meeting tracker

In addition to using D4H status boards for their OEM tracker, the status boards also provide the team with a simple but effective way to keep everyone on the same page, using the boards as a ‘Meeting Tracker’. This tool, integrated within their D4H, helps the team manage all aspects of their meetings, from scheduling and agendas to attendance and follow-up.

It works as a digital meeting notebook, accessible to the whole team. Instead of relying on scattered emails or printed documents, St. Joseph’s uses the Meeting Tracker to store dates, times, locations, and even call-in information for every meeting. Easy to access the agenda on the fly, available at a moment’s notice.

The team used the D4H API to integrate this with their existing tools. Since they use Microsoft Teams for their video conferencing, they simply add the meeting link directly into the tracker. This means anyone can join the meeting with a single click, whether they’re on their laptop, tablet, or phone.  It’s all about making communication as easy and efficient as possible.

This simple tool has made a big difference for St. Joseph’s, streamlining their workflow and ensuring everyone is always in the loop.  It’s a great example of how technology can be used to enhance teamwork and communication, ultimately leading to better preparedness and response.

Since using D4H, the overview of 2024 was the fact that our communication was above and beyond what it has ever been before; not just for activation, but for sharing information. It has truly made things a lot easier.

– Adam Perper,
Director of Emergency Management & Preparedness,

Clear and concise situation reports

St. Joseph’s Health knows that when an emergency strikes, every second counts. That’s why they rely on D4H Incident Management to streamline their situation reports and ensure everyone has the information they need, exactly when they need it. One of the key benefits of D4H is its flexibility. St. Joseph’s emergency management team members can easily customise the platform to fit their specific needs, creating templates and forms that align with their internal processes.

This high level of customisation has been a game-changer for St. Joseph’s, allowing them to create situation reports that are clear, concise, and easy to understand. Whether it’s a minor incident or a major event, their team can quickly generate reports that provide a snapshot of the situation, including key details like the location, the people involved, and the actions being taken.

This high level of customisation has been a game-changer for St. Joseph’s, allowing them to create situation reports that are clear, concise, and easy to understand. Whether it’s a minor incident or a major event, their team can quickly generate reports that provide a snapshot of the situation, including key details like the location, the people involved, and the actions being taken.

The situation reports can be updated in real time, so everyone stays informed as the incident evolves. This level of transparency and communication is crucial in any emergency, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working together effectively. With D4H, St. Joseph’s has found a tool that empowers them to manage incidents with confidence, ensuring the safety and well-being of their community.

Staff tracking during emergency response protocols

St. Joseph’s Health takes a comprehensive approach to staffing its Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Their Incident Management Team is comprised of experienced directors and managers who are well-versed in emergency response protocols. D4H helps them keep track of who’s on duty and actively engaged in the platform.

With D4H, the team can easily see which members are online and actively participating in the response. This real-time visibility ensures that everyone is accounted for and engaged in their respective roles. They can also track who has logged in and accessed information, providing valuable insights into team engagement and platform utilisation.

While they continue to refine their use of D4H for EOC staffing, it has already proven to be a valuable tool for managing their team and ensuring a coordinated response during emergencies.

Managing healthcare incidents with D4H

The St. Joseph’s Emergency Management team adopted D4H software in early 2024 and experienced a swift and straightforward implementation. They were quickly up and running, utilising D4H in both training exercises and real-life incidents.

By adopting the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) IRG Extension Pack within D4H, St. Joseph’s Health has gained a robust framework for managing incidents. This pre-populated toolkit provides checklists and tasks that can be easily customised, ensuring their emergency response is organised and efficient.

IT outage incident

This year, St. Joseph’s Health faced an IT outage incident. They were able to rely on D4H Incident Management to keep things running. With D4H Pre-Plans, the team had already created a “playbook” for dealing with IT disruptions.

As the situation unfolded, they were able to add new tasks and information on the fly, ensuring everyone stayed informed and coordinated. Even though thousands of computers were down, the emergency management team at St. Joseph’s kept could use their iPads and their smartphones with the D4H app. This meant they could access critical information and update the situation report from anywhere, ensuring that communication never faltered.

During the IT outage incident, St. Joseph’s Health utilised D4H to manage resource requests effectively. They adapted templates from another healthcare organisation, tailoring them to their specific needs. This allowed them to track and fulfill requests for various devices, such as desktops, laptops, and even those hidden in exam rooms!

D4H provided a centralised platform to log and manage these requests, replacing the pen-and-paper method. This ensured that every request was documented, tracked, and ultimately marked as complete, bringing a new level of organisation and efficiency to their incident response.

Simulated mass casualty incident

During a recent full-scale exercise at their Patterson campus, St. Joseph’s Health put D4H to the test in a simulated mass casualty incident. The incident involved a multi-vehicle accident that resulted in a surge of patients arriving at the hospital. The emergency department was suddenly flooded with people needing immediate care.

During the mass casualty incident, St. Joseph’s Health used D4H to maintain a clear picture of the situation as it evolved. The platform’s log feature allowed them to track everything in real-time. They used D4H’s Communication Log to keep track of everything happening, from patient transport and bed availability to staffing needs and resource requests.

For instance, when their public information officer was considering a social media post about the incident, they tagged the Incident Commander in the D4H log. This sent an instant notification to the commander, who could then review and approve the message before it went public. This streamlined communication and ensured everyone was on the same page.

D4H also proved invaluable for managing an ongoing IV fluid shortage. By logging updates and tagging relevant personnel like the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer, they ensured that everyone had access to the latest information.

The D4H log allowed the team to tag specific individuals or teams in these logs, sending instant notifications to their phones or computers. This sent critical information to the right people immediately, whether it was an update on available ambulances or a request for additional medical supplies.

 It’s all about keeping everyone in the loop and ensuring a coordinated response, even in the chaos of a simulated mass casualty event. D4H helps St. Joseph’s Health manage the “people” side of emergencies, ensuring that everyone – from patients to staff – is accounted for and cared for.