Mission:
To provide support in the area of planning and coordination for health and medical preparedness for catastrophic events, as well as to provide communications equipment and maintenance and to provide communications services to assist in the quality of care provided patients in Maryland's EMS System.
The emergency operations program has been established to support our federal, state, local, and private partners in areas of health and medical preparedness. Some of the programs activities over the past fiscal year included:
- Staffed and coordinated the Governor’s Emergency Management Advisory Council, Health and Medical Committee, which is responsible for the planning and coordination of all health and medical preparedness activities in Maryland.
- Managed the Facility Resource Emergency Database (FRED), which continues to be used regularly to alert emergency medical services, hospitals, and public health agencies and allows for the effective use of available resources during emergency events and exercises.
- During preparation for potential disasters and actual emergency occurrences, a MIEMSS Field Operations Support Team has provided support to federal, state, and local agencies, as well as hospitals, for the coordination of resources. The team has participated in 17 events since January 2004 that required coordination efforts.
- MIEMSS continues to partner with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) in participating in the Strategic National StockpileProgram. In addition, the partners are working to implement the "Chempack" program, which strategically pre-places federally owned caches of nerve antidote agents in the state.
- Coordinated the distribution of bio-terrorism cooperative agreement funding provided by DHMH to local emergency medical services operations to enhance their ability to respond and provide care.
- Provided representation on the Governor’s Senior Homeland Security Group and when appropriate, provided risk-based information to EMS organizations and hospitals.