A great new volunteer opportunity has arrived since I talked to you here in May about the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), a national organization of healthcare professionals and support personnel who join local membership groups to train, prepare and serve in a disaster.

This month I’d like to suggest a program that might be a great fit for the many of you who understandably have commented, “I just can’t commit to special disaster training, meetings and activities right now - no matter how worthy. But when the guano hits the fan, count me in.”

The Emergency System for the Advance Registration of Volunteer Healthcare Professionals, or ESAR-VHP, is now set up to register and credential the historically large stream of healthcare personnel who wish to volunteer their expertise during a disaster. ESAR-VHP was created by federal and state governments after officials realized they had no system in place to call up qualified healthcare volunteers following hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

California recently set up an ESAR-VHP program and is actively recruiting physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and paramedics with active licenses to register with the program. In the future, the program will expand to include other categories of healthcare professionals, such as PAs.

Basically the California ESAR-VHP program - and similar programs in other states - is a fancy database clearinghouse that verifies qualifications and credentials and can sort by category, willingness to volunteer, location, licensure, health status, and other data. At time of need, appropriate pre-credentialed volunteers can be contacted by phone, pager, email, etc and asked if they are willing to be deployed. If so, travel and other instructions are provided.

The ESAR-VHP program stresses confidentiality, volunteerism and protection. Information about volunteers will only be made available to government emergency planners if a disaster is declared. Signing up is voluntary and participants may accept or turn down any deployment opportunities. Malpractice and related liability concerns are addressed under the government-backed program.

How will volunteers be used? For example, they might augment (provide “surge” capacity) for a healthcare facility overwhelmed by an influx of disaster victims. Or healthcare volunteers might augment overwhelmed hospital staffs during a flu pandemic.

Incidentally, ESAR-VHP is designed to be a state resource first with national interoperability via mutual aid agreements among states and with the federal government.

I strongly endorse ESAR-VHP participation, but I’d like to point out that there are even more committed ways those of us in medicine can become involved in disaster preparedness and service. The next step up in commitment would be the MRC and Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT). ESAR-VHP registrants will not have any meetings and probably no training commitments. The MRC and DMAT units are more formally structured units requiring training and meetings, usually with colleagues and emergency professionals in the member’s county of residence. But the two levels aren’t mutually exclusive. If you are currently an MRC and/or DMAT member (or plan to join), you should also register in the ESAR-VHP database.

More information on these more structured programs can be found in my previous newsletter article on physician volunteerism:

http://med.stanford.edu/shs/update/archives/MAY2006/president.htm

I recently registered in the ESAR-VHP database and urge all Stanford physicians to do so as well. Simply go to: www.medicalvolunteer.ca.gov
California would appreciate registrations by Aug. 31 to help officials evaluate the program during a pilot stage.

To register you will need medical and DEA licensure, driver’s license and medical history information, including a vaccination history. You can leave items blank and return later to add or correct information. It took me around 15 to 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

If you want more information on any of the programs discussed here, go to:

• ESAR-VHP: www.smhealth.org/ems/esarvhp
(Remember, to register go to: www.medicalvolunteer.ca.gov)

• Medical Reserve Corps:
www.medicalreservecorps.gov and
homepage.mac.com/jkgarman/mrc.html

• Disaster Medical Assistance Teams: www.ndms.dhhs.gov/dmat.html and http://www.dmatca6.org/

During the Katrina disaster, 85 Stanford physicians signed up for immediate deployment to the affected Gulf area. Mainly because none of these volunteers were pre-credentialed and a functional registration system was not in place, none of these Stanford volunteers were ever deployed (although a few colleagues served with other existing programs). With registration in ESAR-VHP, and possibly MRC or DMAT service, those who want to help will be able to do so in the future.

Please register now. As always, feel free to contact me with your thoughts or questions, kgarman@stanford.edu.