Dispatch Centers
Tasking of limited resources while providing an appropriate ERC response requires a dedicated team with a comprehensive and current understanding of its assets and their current capabilities. This dispatch center should allocate resources based on mission requirements, the request of the transferring provider, the expected need from across the catchment area, and the capabilities of the available ERC units. Medical evacuation dispatch centers can vary but all should be co-located within a command and control (C2) communications center to coordinate efforts. Examples of dispatch centers include the U.S. Army’s Theater Patient Movement Center for ground and rotary air ambulance medical evacuation and the joint activity Patient Movement Requirements Center for fixed wing aeromedical evacuation assets. Some multi-national AORs have Patient Evacuation Coordination Cells as dispatch centers for medical evacuation.19,20,21 Whatever the configuration of the dispatch center, they require detailed information to ensure the best allocation of available resources. This detailed information includes the validation and the verification of capability as resources increase and decrease with operational tempo and demands.
The 9-line medical evacuation request provides critical decision-making information in a standardized message format that helps expedite the medical evacuation process. A patient’s condition, the operational situation, terrain, weather conditions, enemy threat and availability of assets are communicated in the 9-line request and taken into consideration by the dispatch center when determining the best transport vehicle and type of provider to send. Accurate medical evacuation precedence determination ensures an appropriate dispatch of capability. Urgency of medical care provided by the transferring facility is used to determine the medical evacuation precedence. The senior military person (or designated on-ground mission commander) present in coordination with the senior medical person determines when to request medical evacuation and the precedence assigned to the patient for evacuation. The on-site personnel should determine the evacuation precedence and discrepancies between the ground force precedence and the dispatch center will err on the side of higher acuity with further discussion reserved for after mission completion and the immediate run review process.
CAUTION: Terminology used to communicate precedence is not consistent across services. Terminology for air (rotary wing) and ground ambulances shall be used for inter-facility transports and is provided in Table 2.
