Pandemic Influenza Plan - Questar III

Section 13: Public Health Preparedness Informatics
III. Program Planning, Support and Response
A. Command and Control
1. Incident tracking, management and Situation reports.
Communication in form of textual dialogue and Situation reporting regarding
incidents is currently maintained through three Lotus Notes BMLs. NYSDOH staffed
Health and EMS desks at the State ECC utilize OPSHealth EOps, OPSEMS EOps
BMLs for reporting out to agency response staff. These feed the SitRep BML which
is used for internal reporting and assembly of internal and external Situation Reports.
An Incident Management TeamRoom in Lotus Notes is available to provide a
document management tool for DOH Incident Management staff. It will be used for
collaboration and SitRep report assembly during PHP Events. It uses the Teamroom
template of Lotus Notes to support (1) a repository of reference and plan documents;
(2) an document security system to control authoring, reading, review and
approval/finalization of reports; (3) organization of emergency staff into electronic
workflow teams such as sanitarians, epidemiologists, communicable disease experts,
EMS, radiological staff, etc, that can be changed as the emergency develops; (4)
grouping of calendars for scheduling activities; and, (5) a means to assign tasks
(missions) and track their progress.
2. Inclusion, Cross Jurisdiction and Rapid Commerce Access
Aside from the Scope of Commerce access described above, Tribal Nations within
NYS boarders (Appendix 13-D) and external health jurisdictions of NYC, New
Jersey, and Connecticut have access accounts on the Commerce system. Several out
of state hospitals in close proximity to the NYS border in NYC metro area have
commerce accounts and are linked to HERDS. These include the states of New
Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. A cross jurisdictional communications
directory tool is available to provide contact information for the external health
jurisdictions.
Key response agencies such NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH) and their
associated mental health facilities, Department Agriculture and Markets, Department
of Environmental Conservation, State Emergency Management Office (SEMO) have
accounts on the Commerce System. A list of participating state agencies is provided
in Appendix 13-D. United States DHHS Region II has organizational account access
to Commerce.
An electronic pass-through mechanism has been established to allow linkage of
NYSDOH commerce users to the NYC Jurisdiction HAN system.
HIN coordinator roles at LHDs are provided with a utility (DOC-L) to rapidly sign-up
local response partner organizations and affiliate them with their local health
department organization on the commerce system. These would include local fire,
law enforcement and schools. The DOC-L sign-up allows local response partners
access to health alerts and other ‘open-access’ resources on the commerce system and
further enhances the capacity of LHDs to use the IHANS system to alert local
February 7, 2006 13-16