Members of the Rumford Hospital emergency preparedness team are, front from left, Linda Blais, Rena Nichols, Annette Ross, Lisa Sinclair and Tracey Milledge; second row, Steve Downs, Anne Dolloff, Becky Cote and Randy Orr; back, Travis Palmer, John Cunningham, Priscilla Bickford, Tricia Orr, Dan Bulger, Doug West and George Virgin. Not present when the photo was take were Sally Arsenault, David Blanchard, Jean Cole, Wanda Cote, Dianna Fornier, Kevin Hill, Judy Lovejoy, Bethemy Ring, Al Roy and Wayne Sevigney.

Emergency preparedness team wins

RUMFORD – All four storyboard presentations that Rumford Hospital submitted were selected for display and discussion at the 2007 annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care, where they will be seen by about 6,000 quality improvement specialists from around the world.

The competitive process of placing a storyboard at the forum includes a lengthy application to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which sponsors the forum. The applications detailed the work of the quality teams at Rumford Hospital and the measurable outcomes of their initiatives.

The goal of the emergency preparedness team, which submitted a storyboard, was to improve the hospital’s emergency responsiveness by forming a decontamination team and establishing an incident command system.

The “decon” team was the first in the state to be activated, and the project exceeded the National Incident Management Systems training goal for potential leaders in a disaster situation.