ICS

Incident Command System

Incident Command System

Emergency management and Incident Command System (ICS) concepts serve as the basis for the MSCC Management System. However, unlike traditional descriptions of emergency management and ICS, which organize assets around a defined scene, the MSCC Management System has adapted the concepts to be more applicable to large-scale medical and public health response where there is no defined scene, or where multiple incident scenes may exist (e.g., infectious disease outbreak). Public health and medical professionals must understand the utility of emergency management and ICS concepts as they relate to public health and medical disciplines(Benton, 2007). The following pages examine key distinctions between emergency management and ICS and the roles that each is designed to fulfill during a major medical incident.

Emergency Management

Emergency management describes the science of managing complex systems and multidisciplinary personnel to address extreme events, across all hazards, and through the phases of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Hospital staff and other healthcare personnel might equate emergency management activities to a hospital's Disaster Committee (hence the recommended name change to Emergency Management Committee). The sum of all emergency management activities conducted by a response organization may be collectively referred to as an Emergency Management Program (EMP) for that entity(Benton, 2007). The term program is used because it denotes activity that is continuously ongoing, whereas a plan is often considered a series of actions that occur only in response to defined circumstances.

The activities of the EMP address the phases of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. They are based on a hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA), which if properly accomplished, will identify potential hazards, assess their likelihood of occurrence, their potential impact and the organization's vulnerabilities to the impact, and provide a basis for understanding how the hazard likelihood and organizational vulnerabilities can be addressed. Each EMP phase is briefly described below.

* Mitigation encompasses all activities that reduce or eliminate the probability of a hazard occurrence, or eliminate or reduce the impact from the hazard if it should occur. In Comprehensive Emergency Management, mitigation activities are undertaken during the time period prior to an imminent or actual hazard impact. Once an imminent or actual hazard impact is recognized, subsequent actions are considered response actions and are not called "mitigation." (Medici, 2006)This avoids the confusion that occurs with the HAZMAT discipline's use of mitigation, which applies to response actions that reduce the impact of a hazardous materials spill. Mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management because any response strategy relies on medical assets surviving a hazard and maintaining operations in the post-impact environment (i.e., medical system resiliency). An effective mitigation effort should begin with, and be based on, a valid HVA as this will help an organization prioritize issues during follow-on mitigation and preparedness planning.

* Preparedness encompasses actions designed to build organizational resiliency and/or organizational capacity and capabilities for response to and recovery from hazard impacts. It includes activities that establish, exercise, refine, and maintain systems used for emergency response and ...