Starfish Community

The following fact sheet provides NDMS activiation information as of today Feb 3 2010.

FACT SHEET: NDMS ACTIVATION

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has activated additional components of the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) to help U.S. hospitals provide care to critically ill survivors of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.

This activation will allow U.S. hospitals that treat Haitian patients evacuated with life-threatening injuries due to the earthquake, to receive federal reimbursement for the costs they incur.

Haitian and American patients will be referred by Haitian hospitals, NGOs, the USNS Comfort, or other facilities if they meet criteria for evacuation. These evacuations are being reserved for the rare patients with life-threatening conditions that cannot be handled within Haiti or by evacuation to another country. There must also be a reasonable chance that the patient can survive the flight and the treatment in the U.S. Hospitals are eligible for reimbursement only for patients who, before leaving Haiti, have gone through the NDMS medical screening process and meet the evacuation criteria.

The first NDMS flight could leave Haiti as early as tomorrow.

HHS has activated 2 Federal Coordination Centers (FCCs) in Atlanta and Tampa. These two Centers are staffed by teams from the Department of Veterans Affairs who will meet the flights and arrange ground transport to appropriate hospitals.

Currently we are working with the states of Florida and Georgia to receive patients. The most common injuries for these patients are spinal cord injuries, burns and complex fractures.

We will be assessing the ongoing medical need for these critically injured Haitian patients in the coming days and working with the FCCs to identify hospitals with existing NDMS affiliations and identifying new providers if needed.

Background on NDMS

Accredited hospitals, usually over 100 beds in size and located in large U.S. metropolitan areas, are encouraged to enter into a voluntary agreement with NDMS. Hospitals agree to commit a number of their acute care beds, subject to availability, for NDMS patients. Because this is a completely voluntary program, hospitals may, upon activation of the system, provide more or fewer beds than the number committed in the agreement. Hospitals that admit NDMS patients are guaranteed reimbursement at 110% of Medicare rates by the federal government. NDMS hospitals submit bills to HHS.

NDMS is a partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Veterans Affairs (VA). It began in the 1980s as a mechanism for DOD to bring back mass casualties from a large scale conflict and as a way to respond to a large civilian disaster. Over the years, the domestic disaster mission has expanded and the military need had diminished.

Patient movement is managed by DOD and they provide medical evacuation. VA and DOD regulate patient flow through over 60 Federal Coordinating Centers (FCCs). Definitive care consists of over 1600 hundred civilian hospitals nationwide that agree to accept patients. NDMS is managed by HHS. Activation is by the HHS Secretary in response to a public health or medical emergency.

NDMS has three components: field medical care; patient movement; and definitive care. Field medical care is accomplished through organized medical teams called Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs); fatalities management teams called Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORTs); National Veterinary Response Teams (NVRT); and International Medical Surgical Response Teams (IMSuRT) who are surgical specialists who respond to disasters. Members of the teams are civilian volunteers who are also intermittent employees who are activated when needed.