Medicine

Optimizing emergency response at the Medical Center through SERVPA

Keeping employees, volunteers and students well-informed and safe during a widespread disaster or emergency situation is an important part of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center’s emergency preparedness plans. The Medical Center has endorsed the SERVPA volunteer registry through the Department of Health to not only register employees willing to be deployed in the event of a disaster but to utilize the program’s notification system to keep our campus informed. Important event information can be instantly sent to the entire registry in seconds.

The SERVPA registry is for medical and nonmedical personnel and provides instant licensing verification, messaging and deployment capabilities. The Medical
Center is the first hospital in Pennsylvania to be identified as a deploying unit as well as the first to have a policy supporting it. That means the Medical Center could respond to any local emergency or disaster even if the state has not declared an emergency. Deployments are 100 percent voluntary and any staff member who accepts a mission related to an emergency response would receive his present salary and continue to accrue PTO and vacation time while serving. For more information, refer to policy HR #62.

Any emergency response at the Medical Center will be greatly improved as accurate, pertinent information is consistently relayed to staff -- those who choose to accept a mission and those who do not -- in a timely fashion. Everyone’s participation is key to optimizing our situational awareness.

For more information, log onto http://www.serv.pa.gov online. A valid driver’s license and any professional license you may choose to use is needed to register. Remember to register under the Penn State Hershey Medical Center as the primary unit. Questions should be directed to Nancy Flint in the Department of Emergency Medicine at nflint@hmc.psu.edu or ext. 1707, option 3.

Last Updated August 27, 2009

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