California Looks to Mobile Hospitals for Emergencies

CAL/AAEM News Service calaaem_news at yahoo.com
Thu May 10 15:48:01 PDT 2007


California Looks to Mobile Hospitals for Emergencies

Source: California Healthline (http://www.californiahealthline.org)
Date: April 24, 2007


The California Emergency Medical Services Authority on Tuesday is expected to announce a
deal to purchase three mobile field hospitals for $18 million that are intended to help
manage casualties from a major natural disaster or terrorist attack, the Sacramento Bee
reports. 

The state agency is purchasing the 200-bed portable facilities from BLU-MED Response
Systems, based in Washington state. 

The units are part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) efforts to better prepare and
equip the state to handle a natural disaster or weapons of mass destruction attack. The
facilities will be deployed only when existing hospital emergency capabilities are
greatly reduced or overwhelmed by casualties in a disaster or attack. 

The state aims to have the hospitals on site and operating 72 hours after they have been
activated, according to a 2006 EMSA report. The report added that the facilities can be
built to provide 200, 400 or 600 patient beds, based on the extent of the disaster.

Features
The three hospitals will be stored in state warehouses in Southern California, the Bay
Area and the Sacramento region. Each hospital includes: 

An emergency department; 
An operating room; 
An intensive care unit; 
A nursing care unit; and 
Radiology, laboratory, pharmaceutical and food services.

Cesar Aristeiguieta, director of EMSA, said the agency wants the hospitals delivered and
assembled by June 30 (McIntosh, Sacramento Bee, 4/24).

For more information, please visit: 
http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2007/4/24/California-Looks-to-Mobile-Hospitals-for-Emergencies.aspx?topicId=47


Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service
University of California, Irvine

The CAL/AAEM Archives are available at: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/



 
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