Catholic Health World

Mercy gives emergency responders a head start in crisis

During a fire or a hostage crisis when seconds count, a hospital may be able to provide emergency responders with building diagrams, or cue up security cameras.

The Sisters of Mercy Health System in Chesterfield, Mo., has developed a way for hospitals to link their computer-based diagrams of its buildings and security-camera images for immediate use by police officers and firefighters. Responders can study the information on their own in-vehicle laptops en route to a call.

The idea was born of tragedy. In November 2008, an ex-boyfriend took a lab technician hostage at the St. John's Mercy Urgent Care Center in O'Fallon, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. After holding her for hours in a second-floor room, the man fatally shot his hostage before police shot and killed him.

Jeff Hamilton, emergency management coordinator for Mercy in the St. Louis area, said the incident taught him the flaws of trying to cobble together information for officers arriving during an emergency. "They need to know right away what's down a hall, what's behind a wall," said Hamilton, an RN and former firefighter.

He teamed up with Simon Plowman, a computer specialist who is working to put building drawings on computer-aided-design (CAD) systems for all of Mercy's 28 hospitals and nearly 200 other facilities in four states. CAD systems allow maintenance workers to call up two-dimensional images on computer screens of all of structures, hot-water pipes, oxygen lines, electrical circuits — every utility that makes up the complicated inner maze of a hospital. Workers can zero in on trouble spots with a click or two.

Working with Hamilton, Plowman has combined the CAD system and security-camera network at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, Mo., into a single data stream for public-safety officials. Hamilton and Plowman have provided area police officers and firefighters with special access codes, allowing them to use their own computers to see building diagrams and security-camera sweeps.

Terry Scholl, deputy chief of the Creve Coeur Fire Protection District, praised the system. "It gives us live data showing where utilities run and where shutoff valves and control panels are located. Every fire truck is equipped with computers that can immediately access this information," Scholl said.

Hamilton said police officers have the same needs. "We did a hostage exercise with the FBI, and the first questions from the agents were, 'What's behind that wall? How thick is that wall? What's down that way?'" Hamilton said.

"If they have to shoot through a wall, they want to know what they're going to hit," he said.

The importance was hammered home by an eerie coincidence on Sept. 16, when St. John's held a training session with public-safety officials. Later that day in Baltimore, a man shot and wounded a doctor at The Johns Hopkins Hospital before killing his mother, who was a patient, and himself.

"To have the Johns Hopkins incident happen that same day — Wow," Hamilton said. "We need this."

Plowman said Mercy also is close to completing the system at its St. John's Mercy Hospital in Washington, Mo., about 50 miles west of St. Louis. He said he is offering the system to other Mercy hospitals as he goes about his original assignment of converting all building diagrams into CAD systems.

Randy Combs, Mercy's chief financial officer, said the system makes hospitals more secure. "At Mercy, we take patient safety very seriously. The new CAD program is just one of the behind-the-scenes ways we are making that possible."

Plowman said the link for public-safety officers provides the information so that officers can easily match building diagrams for a hospital wing or hallway to the security cameras in that area. The data show up on separate "screens," but officers can flip back and forth quickly and easily, he said.

He said only public-safety officers, not hospital maintenance personnel, have the access codes to use it. And he said it uses a hospital's regular security-camera system, so patient privacy can be protected.

The system is something Plowman hopes the hospitals never have to use. But they will use CAD every day for routine maintenance and repairs. He said combining all building diagrams into one CAD system lets engineers and maintenance workers locate problems quickly.

"Hospitals have lots of drawings and computer records of their oxygen and nitrogen lines, sprinklers and electrical systems," Plowman said. "What this does is bring everything together, all the jigsaw pieces, into one drawing. This makes it quick and easy to see what's going on anywhere in the hospital."

Copyright © 2010 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
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