Mock drill coordinates efforts of N.Y. community hospitals

A recent mock disaster drill coordinated the efforts of community hospitals near Fort Drum in New York, according to an article on the Watertown Daily Times website.

Healthcare facilities practiced with a scenario in which a MQ-9 unmanned aircraft crashed on Fort Drum, injuring about 30 soldiers and leaving two dead. 

“Overall it went very well,” said Samaritan Medical Center's  Emergency Management/HazCom Coordinator Stephen Falk. “We learned important things to be used in the future. We continually improve the process.”

At Carthage Area Hospital, information on each make-believe patient was entered into a database accessible to Fort Drum personnel.

“It tracks patients from the field to the hospital and then if they are transferred as the case would have been with an incident like today with many burn patients,” Thomas Jaconski, the hospital’s emergency preparedness coordinator, said.

Read the article.