Pandemic Preparedness Exercises (PDF, 1.3MB)
The Situation
Public health officials around the world are on alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic. Moreover, because of recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of flu vaccines, as well as the rising specter of the avian flu, experts are alarmed about the world's potential inability to prevent or contain a human pandemic.
The United States government has allocated $325 million dollars to assist state and local governments in formulating plans to prepare for, respond to, and contain an outbreak of pandemic flu. With a population of 12 million, and many more visiting the state each day, the state of Pennsylvania was among the top five recipients of Federal preparedness funding.
The Objective
To help ensure that hospitals. first responders and local communities within the state were fully prepared to deal with a pandemic flu crisis. More specifically, participating hospitals needed to validate and improve existing plans, and to develop Pandemic Response Plans for their facilities, for the prevention and control of the spread of disease.
The Opportunity
With Serco as its partner, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) took the lead in putting the allocated federal funds to work in an intensive, coordinated exercise program across the nine Regional Counterterrorism Task Force areas of the state. The scope of work included the design and execution of a comprehensive plan to evaluate pandemic influenza preventive measures and avian flu preparedness at every hospital, vaccination clinic and community based health organization across the state.
Serco's strategy took an aggressive approach toward filling any preparedness gap, making certain public health measures and emergency medical services are in place, and a continuity of operation plans exists, for each region of Pennsylvania.
The Approach
Serco assembled a nationally recognized team of subject matter experts and local strategic partners to assist the development efforts of the program. Like Serco, each valued partner had strong credentials in National Preparedness exercise and training programs. They included:
- EM Innovations (Philadelphia, PA) - Instrumental in designing a new phased exercise approach and design;
- ECCI (Pittsburgh, PA) - Provided emergency medical services expertise;
- Delta Development and Defense Solutions (Central PA) - Provided state government planning and public information credentials; and,
- Quintessence Multimedia (Philadelphia, PA) - Delivered a high-quality video in order to better communicate pandemic awareness across the state.
The Team was also able to leverage valuable experience and lessons learned from recent preparedness exercises run by Serco. These included staging the largest ever regional Weapons of Mass Destruction" exercise in central PA and managing a Capitol Complex Evacuation Planning Tabletop Exercise in Harrisburg, PA. The Serco Team worked to provide solutions 10 additional project challenges, including:
- Participation: Only a handful of hospitals had a pandemic flu response plan in place. Scheduling time with key payers at each hospital without causing disruption in day-to-day, mission critical operations was a major challenge. Serco proposed a 5-day exercise that incrementally simulated various pandemic phases in a tabletop format, securing advance buy-in from nearly 100% of the institutions.
- Timeline: The timeline to use the Federal use-it-or-lose-it grant monies for pandemic preparedness programs was growing short. Serco dedicated additional resources to meet the deadline without compromising analysis, content or planning. The nine regional exercises were slated for completion within five months instead of the original 18 month window.
- Constituencies: Serco knew from experience that the scope of participation needed to be widened to include stakeholders and constituents such as volunteer organizations, county and school association leadership, and menial health counselors.
- Deliverables: These exercises were designed to find and fix holes in emergency preparedness plans in advance of an actual emergency. The goal was to identify areas that require improvements and additional resources and to provide each participating group with a viable pandemic response plan.
The Results
The DOH's Regional Hospital Preparedness Exercise Program developed with the Serco Team was successfully rolled out across the state of Pennsylvania with nearly 100% participation.
A participant survey conducted online through Zoomerang™ provided the Serco Team with valuable feedback for future exercises and much-deserved kudos for a job well-done.
