Kara Stamets, Content Marketing Specialist, Alertus Technologies

The Veteran Affairs (VA) Tennessee Valley Healthcare System provides healthcare services at 21 locations across central Tennessee and southern Kentucky. They offer training for future healthcare providers and lead important medical research in health services, rehabilitation, cardiology, dermatology, oncology, and many more fields.

We spoke with Charles Pickett, Emergency Management Specialist at the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, who leads disaster planning, testing, and staff education in these areas, and also assists the healthcare system when disasters occur.  

What challenges did the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System initially face that led to considering an emergency mass notification system? 

There was an active shooter event in which a Veteran shot himself in the head in the lobby of our Nashville VA Medical Center Campus. The healthcare system had no way of alerting the facility that an emergency was occurring. Since that incident, leadership decided to invest in a mass notification system that would alert staff and visitors to keep them safe. The Emergency Alerting & Accountability System (EAAS) also known as AtHoc, which is the VA’s system-wide SMS/email alert system, came about after this event. Our end goal is to integrate/complement the Alertus System with EAAS. 

What are some advantages you’ve discovered while using our solution? 

We now have the advantage of being able to notify a portion of a facility, the entire facility, or ALL of our facilities. We can target individual computers, teams, or sections within a facility as well. We are using Desktop™ Notification, IP Phone Integration, High Power Speaker Arrays (HPSA), the Alert Beacon®, IP Speakers, Hardwired Panic Buttons, and USB Panic Buttons. Utilizing these solutions within our facilities has helped us achieve system-wide notification that gives us control.  

Have you used or activated the Alertus system in an emergency?

Not yet, but we have come close. There was an instance in which we had to initiate a partial evacuation for a fire in a building. We didn’t purchase the Fire Alarm Control Panel Interface feature of Alertus at the time, but it certainly would have helped streamline the alerting process.

Do you test your Alertus System regularly?

I test my HPSAs almost weekly, and a full system test is scheduled quarterly. We use the Alertus self-reporting feature often.

What advice would you give to other VA sites, or generally to healthcare facilities, when it comes to selecting and then using a mass notification system?

I think it’s a simple answer in question form…What’s your plan to keep your family safe if they happen to visit you at work and an incident occurs? Would you like them and yourself to be notified as quickly as possible before conditions worsen? Alertus provides detailed instructions and early notification to people in and around your facility, so not only are your people notified, but the people around your facility in the community are too. If you don’t want you or your family to walk into a potentially bad situation, then this only makes sense.

What next steps does your institution have regarding emergency mass notification? 

Next for us is to make Alertus more robust. We will add more IP Text-to-Speech (TTS) speakers and Alert Beacons, as well as the Rapid Response Console and the Activator App to allow key personnel, such as VA Police, to activate the system while on patrol, should the need arise. Personnel in high-threat areas will be able to use their mobile devices to activate the system if they need to take cover and can’t reach one of the panic buttons.