The Valley Hospital of New Jersey announced that it was able to maintain operations and communication between its patients and staff during Hurricane Sandy by utilizing a system from interactive communication and mass notification solutions provider Everbridge.
During the days without power, the Everbridge system allowed the hospital to make sure that only essential personnel came into work and informed those individuals to bring along supplies to stay overnight.
“We turned first to Everbridge, it’s always the first point of contact because we know how efficient it is in providing information consistently, quickly and without any effort from our side,” said Maureen DiTore, director of telecommunications at The Valley Hospital, in a statement.
“We can launch a notification whether we’re inside at a desktop, laptop or out in the field using our smartphone or tablets. Immediately we know the message has been sent and we can then look at the automatic reports and see how many (people) are confirmed and how many couldn’t be confirmed, letting us know whether we need to update our contact information or not. It provides us with interactive visibility into the situation, an overall snapshot view of how successful our communications were.”
Prior to implementing the Everbridge communication system, the hospital used manual phone trees to stay in touch during emergencies.
“At Everbridge we are committed to providing customers like Valley Hospital with the most reliable, user friendly mass communication solutions suite possible,” Imad Mouline, chief strategy officer at Everbridge, said in a statement. “In emergency events like Hurricane Sandy, it is critical that a communications suite increase situational intelligence to ensure operations can be maintained in the safest, most efficient manner. On top of that, our elastic infrastructure model ensures that no matter the scale of the crisis, the system will perform as quickly and efficiently as expected.”
This is not the first hospital to adopt Everbridge in its emergency response operations. Last November, the University of Colorado Health choose Everbridge to supply its six hospitals, numerous clinics and outpatient services with a mass communication service that is intended to inform individuals during disasters and severe weather events.
Edited by
Ashley Caputo
