MILWAUKEE — With less than a year until the Republican National Convention (RNC), organizations are gearing up for the massive surge of visitors.
One group already well-underway with their plans is the Wisconsin Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition, known as HERC.
There are seven HERC regions across the state.
Dr. J. Marc Liu works in emergency medicine at Froedtert Hospital and leads the HERC team that covers Milwaukee.
“We talk about education, training, preparedness and planning for medical disasters, and also do exercising and drills to better coordinate our response across the region if something big were to happen,” said Dr. J. Marc Liu, Chief Medical Officer, Southeast WI Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition.
Hospitals, clinics, public health agencies, community and volunteer organizations, and law enforcement make up the HERC team.
Dr. Liu says the team's success in planning for major events like the RNC lies in how well all of these groups work together.
“From an emergency response, emergency management healthcare aspect, we need to be prepared for anything that might result when we have that large number come in,” said Dr. Liu.
In addition to regional planning, hospitals like Froedtert have their own in-house prep.
Coordinator Lisa Hass-Peters says her team meets regularly to anticipate anything.
“We have been looking at our plans, our policies, how that would be affected for the convention. We have increased our training and exercising with mass casualty, medical surge readiness, as well as radiation, chemical, etc., that could potentially be an issue,” said Lisa Hass-Peters, RN, Emergency Preparedness Coordinator, Froedtert Hospital
While much of the planning is still in the early phases, area hospitals are ready to take care of patients, regardless of who or what is in town.
“It is a lot of different moving parts that we have to organize and validate that we are ready, which we are, but there's always room for improvement,” said Hass-Peters.
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