D4H Preparedness Software Deployed By Largest Hospital In United States

With over 2,600 beds, 6,500 physicians, and 20,000 employees NewYork–Presbyterian is one of the busiest hospitals in the world and the largest in the United States. The numbers are astonishing on an annual basis; 2 million visitors, 15,000 infant deliveries, and more than 310,000 admitted to the emergency department.

Ranked as the #1 Hospital in New York, with the nation’s busiest burn center and largest hospital EMS fleet in the city, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital rescued and treated many survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center; and sadly also lost some of their staff.

The outcome from a tragic event of the magnitude of 9/11 saw thousands of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital employees trained for Hazardous Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction Awareness, Operations, and Technicians.

The hospital maintains an outstanding Medical Decontamination Unit and Hazardous Materials Decontamination Team, coordinating its activities with the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, FDNY, and the NY State Department of Health (NYSDOH), and NewYork City Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) for readiness in case of either actual emergency need or elevated threat levels.

The Challenge

Beyond these capabilities, the decontamination team must be ready at any time to perform the decon of patients arriving into the ambulance bay at the emergency department. While most have had gross decon on-scene, many need further attention. NYP operates a totally integrated continuum of training, response, and equipment for protection against and decontamination of hazardous materials.

“We have a large pool of response equipment which we need to maintain, calibrate, inventory, and manage to keep it in a state of constant readiness.”
— Arthur Ditzel, Manager of Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Management, NewYork Presbyterian Hospital

Complications for NewYork–Presbyterian include the multi-site management of equipment, Ditzel continued;

“Our equipment including hazmat PPE, air bottles, positive air pressure masks, and sensitive instrumentation is stored in trailers, vehicles, and stock rooms across our 10 large campuses in the New York City metropolitan area.”
— Arthur Ditzel, Manager of Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Management, NewYork Presbyterian Hospital

The emergency preparedness team at NewYork–Presbyterian needed centralized equipment management software to help them be ready to respond across the 7 hospitals and 3 regional network facilities; Columbia University Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical Center, Allen Hospital, Lawrence Hospital, Lower Manhattan Hospital, Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Westchester, Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, Hudson Valley Hospital, and Queens.

Each month, the team must inspect life-safety items for function tests and calibrations which are critical for the good outcome of any incident. Expiry dates on all equipment and consumables must be checked and monitored to identify budget requirements, while a constant count of quantities must be maintained to declare stockpile strength.

The Solution

NewYork–Presbyterian selected D4H Equipment Management to allow them to move from focussing on how much equipment they had, to how much equipment is ready to respond. The team was able to create a centralized dashboard of all maintenance, repairs, inspections, and status filterable by each hospital in the network.

D4H Equipment Management is a cloud-based product that can be instantly deployed for any hospital emergency preparedness team. Accessible from your smartphone, tablet, or laptop; the platform is intuitive to get started and easy to use for your staff.

NewYork–Presbyterian now have a digitized inventory they can easily access by category, kind, location, manufacturer, and model. Ditzel commented

“I can now answer any equipment question with an instant report. D4H Equipment Management has simplified our entire inventory system with automatic alerts, proactively flagging anything that needs our attention.”
— Arthur Ditzel, Manager of Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Management, NewYork Presbyterian Hospital