Pandemic Influenza Plan - Questar III

Section 13: Public Health Preparedness Informatics
be cascaded through the NYS notification system to local health departments and
other organizations. Regional offices and local health departments that have
personnel who have been trained and certified in the use of the Alert Tool (Appendix
13-D) will then cascade the notification, and link to the correct HAN posting if
applicable, further to their local contacts established in the communications directory.
The IHANS system will handle the processing of ECLRS notifications and will
support the emergency notification needs of other Commerce preparedness and
response applications, such as HERDS and the professional Medical Volunteer
Database.
a. State DOH Readiness to use Notification System
In order for the emergency notification system to function most effectively, the
following tasks will be accomplished as part of the agency’s preparedness
planning processes:
‣ NYSDOH Action items:
• Account maintenance. Assure that all response related agency staff have been
granted access to commerce, have active accounts system and know their user IDs
and passwords. (For NYSDOH/HRI employees, Commerce user ID and password
will be the same as agency enterprise ID and password by February, 2006.)
• Training and Executive Commitment in use of ComDir. Additional training
and commitment of NYSDOH personnel in use of the ComDir is needed,
including appointing Directory Coordinators who are responsible for maintaining
up to date emergency contact information and role assignments for their program
areas key staff in the Communications Directory. This is essential to supporting
immediate contact for emergency notifications sent by executive staff, or by local
health departments or NYSDOH regional offices.
• Reinforcement to External partners. NYSDOH program areas engaging in
continuous reinforcement for the need for active use of Commerce system with
healthcare facilities and responder communities, in support of existing regulation
requiring that facilities maintain active HPN coordinators and current
communications directory contacts.
• Creation and maintenance of Contact lists. NYSDOH program to define
contact functions/needs and create emergency contact lists using the ComDir list
tool. These lists are customized to serve various alerting purposes and recipient
groups in pandemic response. These must be completed in advance of, and in
preparation for, a pandemic event. List creation responsibility can be delegated to
clerical staff.
o Each of these lists should include HIN and HPN Coordinators in the
Editor role so that they may add the appropriate individuals at their own
facility to be contacted under the specific circumstances defined for that
contact list.
Contact lists should include:
• Epidemiology (across all partners) (communicable/infectious
disease surveillance and related notifications)
February 7, 2006 13-18