Hawaii Healthcare Emergency Management Coalition is a statewide federally qualified all hazards comprehensive emergency management healthcare coalition program within the Hawaii Hospital Education and Research Foundation (HHERF), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) wholly owned subsidiary of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii. The HHEM program was commissioned in 2003 by the federal government with the support of the Hawaii State Department of Health.

The coalition provides a unique array of statewide healthcare emergency management services and capabilities such as an integrated communication and information sharing systems, coordination of healthcare response and recovery operations, patient tracking system, deployment of a variety of emergency response teams such as an all hazards disaster medical response and recovery team, HERT (Hospital Emergency Response Team), Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT), Incident Specialty Teams (IST) and various strike teams, mobilization of healthcare delivery systems, learning management system for training, logistic support, medical countermeasures, administration of a statewide patient tracking system, planning and preparedness activities such as training, workshops, tabletop, functional and full scale exercises, etc.

The coalition is led by a director and operates with a small permanent staff of 4.0 FTE and three area coordinator professional staff (counties of Kauai, Maui and Hawaii) and over 186 emergency managers representing each member organization. The Emergency Management Committee which consists of emergency managers representing each of the healthcare organizations is chaired by the executive director and provides governance for coalition.

The HHEM coalition program is primarily funded with federal HPP or Hospital Preparedness Program grant funding. The grant funding is provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) to the Hawaii State Department of Health and then granted to the HHEM Coalition via a contract for services agreement. The HHEM coalition program also relies revenue generation from its annual new member sustainable dues, consulting and other services.

Membership consists of over 186 healthcare organizations statewide in all of the counties. Those organizations include all of the hospitals, all of the dialysis centers, most of the long term care facilities, most of the home health providers, most of the long term care facilities, most of the home health providers, all of the hospice providers, all of the community health centers, most of the assisted living facilities, air and ground ambulance providers, pharmaceutical providers, medical gas providers, durable medical equipment providers, ambulatory surgical center providers, blood bank, clinical laboratories, individual with intellectual disabilities intermediate care facility providers, etc. The roles and responsibilities of members and Hawaii Healthcare Emergency Management are defined and described in a MOU or Memorandum of Understanding signed by each organization.

The goal is to sustain and maintain essential and critical healthcare system services statewide during and after a major emergency or disasters through strong coordination, collaboration and leveraging all of the statewide healthcare resources and information sharing.

HHEM’s Role During COVID-19

During the pandemic, HHEM played a key role in making sure healthcare organizations provided safer care for patients and residents. Many facilities in Hawaii were concerned that COVID-19 would deplete their PPE resources. HHEM, in collaboration with the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH), and Healthcare Association of Hawaii, responded by ordering and dispersing personal protective equipment (PPE) to the hospitals, nursing and assisted living facilities, home health agencies, hospices, frontline workers and others.

Here are more ways that HHEM helped members and other healthcare providers prepare and battle the pandemic based on our core missions.

Mission 1:

• HHEM has been providing critical information and situational updates daily to our members in the form of a situational update or “sit Rep” that goes out daily to DOH and other agencies.

Mission 2:

• HHEM has had our EOC operational since March of 2020 to coordinate our response to request that come in for needs. Those needs could be PPE, equipment needs, staffing shortages, and other needs that pop up.

Mission 3:

• Have not deployed any response teams due to staffing is already working with in healthcare facilities.

Mission 4:

• Coordinated with Facilities to deploy coalition tent systems to help handle surge and other needs the hospitals would have.

• Planning and collaborating with DOH and HI-EMA in refining Alternative care site plans that would best fit Hawaii’s needs in the response to COVID-19.

Mission 5:

• HHEM has assisted in coordinating patient movement from long-term care to hospitals and other interfacility transfers.

Mission 6:

• HHEM has proved logistical support by moving over 1.8 million items to members and nonmembers statewide.

• HHEM has completed over 1350 Requests for assistance (RFA) since March of 2020.

Mission 7:

• Electronic patient tracking system is still under development at this time.

Mission 8:

• HHEM has had our Emergency Operations center up and running since March of 2020.

• Hospitals and other health care facilities have stood up their EOC and are in coordination with HHEM on their needs.

Mission 9:

• HHEM is using and maintain our contingency communications and running monthly tests on them during COVID.

• HHEM is in the process of repairing some of the systems that are down. Travel restrictions have made it difficult to get to the outer island, but we are working through that in an effort to get the outer islands up and running before hurricane season 2021.

Mission 10:

• HHEM has been active in the planning process throughout COVID.

• Planning COVID vaccine effort that started in September 2020.

• Planning and collaboration with DOH and HI-EMA on ACS plans.

• Statewide exercises have been postponed due to COVID but COVID has been our real-life event that the entire coalition has learned from. Lessons learned continue to be captured and will be noted in a after action report.

• HHEM is planning our Makani Pahili statewide exercise in June of 2021. This will be a virtual exercise that will include all of our members.