Kentucky Health Alert Network Case Study

Cutting-edge Emergency Alert Network Protects Citizens of Kentucky

Challenge

The Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH) develops and supports public health programs and activities for Kentucky residents and encompasses 56 local public health organizations covering 120 counties. While Kentucky has long had public health emergency plans in place, the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States were a wake-up call for public health leaders nationwide. The ability to quickly disseminate information and respond to emergencies became ever more critical – whether the crisis was natural, manmade or bioterrorism. In 2001, the KDPH initiated efforts aimed at enhancing their emergency response capabilities.

Solutions

The Kentucky Health Alert Network (KYHAN), a key component in their enhanced emergency response capabilities, went live in 2003. Built on the Global Secure Response Manager platform, KYHAN is a secure, web-based system that enables public health personnel to instantly communicate and collaborate with other government and non-government health personnel.

Functional Role-Based Directory Speeds Alerts

Response Manager offered several must-have capabilities, according to Tim Cooper, project manager for KYHAN as well as for the state’s Disease Surveillance System and Immunization Registry.

“The functional role-based directory is one of the key things that sets Response Manager apart,’ he says. “With continual employee changes, and many employees handling multiple job responsibilities, we knew we could not rely on a list of names being accurate, complete and current when we needed to quickly distribute large-scale information alerts. Rather than individually selecting 150 names when sending an alert, the functional role capability means we can select a small number of functional roles or functional role groups to reach all of those people. From a time standpoint, that’s a huge benefit.”

KYHAN’s functional roles are based on responsibilities which will be performed during a public health event. This allows for the appropriate people to be alerted in a public health incident without specific knowledge of who each individual is by name.

“You really can’t have an emergency response program without a directory like this,” says Cooper. "There’s an added benefit as well, in that having to think through what functional roles we will have during an incident, and who will be in those functional roles, makes us really consider our emergency response plans as a whole.”

Easy to Use Tools for Non-Techie Administrators

KDPH also was attracted to Response Manager for its ease of use, critical for KYHAN’s large base of non-technical users, many in rural areas without easy access to onsite technical support. Each of the state’s 56 local public health organizations has a public health preparedness planner who is designated as the KYHAN administrator for that district.

“Most of our users, and administrators, are not technical people, so we needed a system that would be easy to learn and use,” notes Cooper. “The graphic interface is very intuitive. Tasks like setting up users’ functional roles, giving them alerting rights and setting their access permissions are quick and simple for the local administrators to do.”

In addition, Response Manager’s delegated alerting rights structure virtually eliminates the possibility for local users to accidentally send alerts to state-level officials or to everyone in the state. "Of the 2,500 people on the system, about two-thirds potentially can send alerts. We don’t worry about people accidentally sending alerts beyond their jurisdiction because alerting rights are limited based on the user’s functional role," notes Cooper.

Results

Kentucky health officials are increasingly relying on KYHAN to disseminate emergency alerts. A few recent examples include:

• KYHAN proved invaluable in September 2006 when Kentucky was one of several states with confirmed E-coli cases. State-issued alerts notified all infection control practitioners and epidemiologists statewide of the national E-coli outbreak and posted the required questionnaires in the document library. The system was also used by the State Laboratory to notify all Sentinel Laboratories of E-coli specimen submission procedures and protocol.
• In January 2006, the Centers for Disease Control sent out an alert regarding an influenza strain resistant to certain drugs. The CDC alert went to the Kentucky state epidemiologist, who in turn alerted nurses and epidemiologists statewide.
• When Hurricane Katrina evacuees migrated to Kentucky last fall, state-issued alerts let local areas know where evacuees were arriving, where volunteers were needed, and where forms and medical supplies could be accessed.

Secure Online Document Library Encourages Collaboration

Cooper says another critical feature of Response Manager is its secure collaboration capabilities. Through it, individuals from across the state can share documents and collaborate on developing emergency response plans in real-time from their offices.

"KYHAN eliminates the problems associated with working on a document via email. Unlike email, there are no size limitations on documents, so it makes for an ideal way to coordinate dissemination of critical material" notes Cooper. "The collaboration feature is being used more and more. People are realizing it is easier, faster and cheaper than having to travel across the state for face-to-face meetings."

When KDPH began scheduling statewide flu summits this year, planners used KYHAN’s document library to check other areas’ summit dates and schedule their own. The document library houses everything from forms to each of the 56 local public health organization’s response plans and inventory of county-by-county flu vaccines. Groups outside of KDPH also are benefiting from the document library.

Other Groups Also Benefiting from KYHAN

A natural progression in KYHAN’s evolution, says Cooper, will be continued expansion to other groups. Two Kentucky HAZMAT Teams are now piloting KYHAN as a vehicle for communicating between their teams. In conjunction with KDPH, Kentucky State Police, Homeland Security and emergency response personnel are using it for pandemic flu planning. "We expect more involvement from HAZMAT groups and additional state departments looking to use KYHAN," says Cooper. "Our major focus right now is on more actively engaging and communicating with private physicians. To do that, we will use Global Secure’s Volunteer Mobilizer system which we are in the process of bringing on line now."

With a user base of 2,500 and growing, Response Manager’s functionality will be increasingly critical. "There’s no way I could do this job without the delegated administration capability, and there would be no way to keep the data current," says Cooper. "And the functional role-based directory is helping our local planners be more concrete in their emergency response plans by thinking through what functional roles are necessary and how they will respond to public health emergencies.

Get more information on Kentucky’s Health Alert Network.