Western Shelter Systems

The 2010 MIEP exercise in New Orleans allowed the Department of Defense as well as local first responders and hospital personal to practice patient relocation or patient reception that would take place during an emergency. The teams used Western Shelter System's GateKeeper shelters to implement patient reception, assessment, tracking and processing areas.

When disaster struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010, emergency response teams across the US prepared for deployment. Within days of the earthquake US NDMS DMAT teams were on the ground setting up emergency field hospitals to help with the thousands of injured Haitians. The following Emergency Response Video provides insight into the daily operations of one of these NDMS DMAT mobile medical clinics.

The recent National Emergency Declaration, signed by President Obama on October 24th of 2009, has helped several hospitals to respond to the growing H1N1 pandemic. This declaration allows hospitals to seek a waiver from specific EMTALA and HIPAA requirements in order to meet the growing needs of their patients.

Providence Health Systems in the Pacific NW is figuratively putting more sandbags in place by expanding their very successful surge capacity plan to their smaller outlying facilities. Providence deployed their GateKeeper alternative care facilities just outside the hospitals' Emergency Departments to protect the hospital and staff from exposure whil still providing appropriate care to the community.