Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009 - 14

FEATURE ARTICLE By Ron Oswald and Kristen Bell Meservey U.S. National Emergency Medical Response Urgent Need for Emergency Medical Surge U.S. emergency medical response lacks the necessary surge capacity in people, equipment, and accessibility to cope with regional or national medical emergencies caused by large-scale natural disasters, terrorist acts, and pandemic diseases. agent in released in our Nation’s capital…our nation’s medical facilities, including emergency departments and trauma centers, would be overwhelmed.” Secretary Leavitt also stated there are “…gaps in the capability of U.S. hospitals to deal with a mass-casualty terrorist attack or other disaster…” and “…lawmakers could target funds at the shortcomings more directly, such as by ﬁnancing the stockpiling of hospital beds, ventilator units or medicines.” The 2009 National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine by the American College of Emergency Physicians found: “The nation has too few emergency departments…the number of hospital emergency departments has dropped nearly 7 percent, from 4,109 to 3,833. In addition, shortages of health care professionals at multiple levels—nurses, primary care physicians, emergency physicians, and other specialists—also jeopardize access to quality emergency care.” Local, municipal, and state health care professionals and infrastructures, which represent the first-line of emergency medical response, operate at full capacity to meet existing medical needs. Without immediate action to build national emergency medical surge, the next pandemic, disaster, or attack could result in catastrophic loss of life. In March 2008, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform conducted an Emergency Care Capacity Survey and found that hospitals in seven major metropolitan areas “…had no space in their emergency rooms to treat a sudden surge of victims, few had available beds in their intensive care units and too few regular beds to handle even those with less serious injuries.” Building medical surge capability at local levels is costly: “We cannot afford to build and maintain idle trauma facilities…” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. In May 2008, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt testiﬁed before the House Oversight Committee “[I]f an improvised nuclear device or radiological dispersal device (i.e., a dirty bomb) goes off in the middle of Manhattan or a biological Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Pandemics The 9/11 Commission warned that “the greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons.” In December 2008, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (WMDPT) reported: “…it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the 12 | Homeland Defense Journal Visit www.homelanddefensejournal.com
Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009
