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Planning For The Next Pandemic Means Tracking This One

Debrief. 

It’s a word that public safety is innately familiar with. Merriam-Webster.com defines the word in two ways.

  1. To interrogate (someone, such as a pilot) usually upon return (as from a mission) in order to obtain useful information
  2. To carefully review upon completion.

Whether you’re a Field Training Officer sitting down with your recruit to discuss that last run or the executive staff of a department sitting around a conference table after a critical event, the questions are basically the same:  What happened?  How did we respond?  How do we do it better next time?

One of the many issues facing agencies all over the country as they deal with the COVID-19 crisis is understanding the complexity of how the pandemic is affecting their response. How do they respond to a situation that is evolving on an unprecedented scale? How do they track not only the calls for service from the public, but the precautions and protective measures necessary to effectively manage them? How do they handle staffing shortages that may last days or weeks?

Historically, agencies show up with charts and graphs, reports and timelines that break it all down so they can identify the weak points and reevaluate the tactics. Then they make plans to fill the gaps in training, equipment, and strategy so that next time the response is better, faster, more efficient, and safer not only for the community, for the responders as well.

But how do they track something they’ve never seen before? You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand. You can’t understand a problem without the data necessary to view it from all sides.

The Mark43 Pandemic Preparedness Package has been developed to capture critical data in the field and present it to command staff to help them make informed decisions. It provides Potential Exposure Reports to allow all agency personnel to record an instance in which they may have been exposed to COVID-19, noting any precautions or protective measures taken during the interaction. 

Potential Exposure Reports

It includes an Exposure Status Update Report that updates initial information in the Potential Exposure Report to include new test results, updates to the individual’s condition, or changes to their estimated return date. It delivers analytics through a COVID-19 Potential Exposure Dashboard that provides real-time data highlighting recent potential exposures and overall impact on staffing. It includes COVID-related absences expected per day, the number of days expected to return to work, and can be configured to automatically send summaries daily, by shift, or even hourly.

COVID-19 Potential Exposure Dashboard

Mark43’s Pandemic Preparedness Package may also help agencies gather the critical information required for state and/or federal reimbursement once the crisis is resolved. While the rest of the world returns to normal, public safety will be sitting down at conference tables across the nation. The debrief and discussion of the impact of COVID-19 needs data in order to be effective. 

Mark43’s Pandemic Preparedness Package is designed to gather the data regarding COVID-19 response, organize and present it as knowledge and use it to develop the intelligence necessary to make informed decisions that not only improve their ability to respond now, but to answer the questions: What happened? How did we respond? How do we do it better next time?

 

Lori Cox spent 25 years as an officer with the City of Columbus, Ohio Division of Police, including 18 years in PoliceNET Operations as a Network Administrator, Trainer, and Project Manager.