Eisenhower Health turns to application to enhance disaster response

Eisenhower Health is looking to software to develop a more comprehensive communication network tailored to emergency and disaster response situations.


Eisenhower Health is looking to software to develop a more comprehensive communication network tailored to emergency and disaster response situations.

The Rancho Mirage, Calif.-based organization is taking these steps after it suffered an active shooter incident on its campus in March. It’s turning to software from healthcare communications company Mobile Heartbeat to improve its capabilities.


Following the incident, Mobile Heartbeat wrote a report containing communication data analytics from the hospital units that were affected, and together, the organization and vendor developed recommendations for improving existing processes and the hospital’s communication structure.

“Hospitals need to understand that communication is critical to inform employees, patients and everyone else about what is happening during a critical situation,” says Ann Mostofi, vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer at Eisenhower Health.

“We have found that Mobile Heartbeat can be that source of inside truth with almost instantaneous communication about what is really happening,” she adds.

Also See: Why incident response planning is growing in importance

Improvements being made at the hospital include an enterprise rollout of mobile devices, called MH-CURE, to enable Eisenhower’s security team to send timely hospital-wide updates along with strategic teams elsewhere in the facility so deployment of the incident command center can quickly be up and running with bi-directional communication among the strategic teams.

A Guide to emergency response white paper from the vendor on use of practical applications during critical incidents is available here. The guide recounts the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas as 199 patients were transported to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. By the time the morning shift arrived seven hours later, care had been given to each of those patients.