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Colorado / Mountain Plains Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS)

Partnership for Disaster Health Response Cooperative Agreement Recipient

The Mountain Plains Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS) began on September 30, 2020 and is the third site under the Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS) demonstration site project. The demonstration project is led by the Denver Health and Hospital Authority, a body corporate and political subdivision of the State of Colorado that is responsible for the operation of the Denver Health Medical Center. Denver Health sees nearly 930,000 total patient visits annually and is Colorado’s primary safety-net institution.

The Mountain Plains RDHRS will use the $3 million it received through a cooperative agreement with HHS ASPR to demonstrate how a RDHRS can improve medical surge and clinical specialty capabilities – including trauma, burn, or other specialty care – during a national emergency and save more lives.

Partnership Priorities and Approach

The RDHRS builds on local health care coalitions and trauma centers, creating a tiered system for disaster health response. The system will integrate local medical response capabilities with emergency medical services, burn centers, pediatric hospitals, labs, and outpatient services to meet the overwhelming health care needs created by disasters.

All three recipients will build or continue to expand systems that exhibit the following five capabilities:

  • Build a partnership for disaster health response to support clinical specialty care;
  • Align plans, policies, and procedures for clinical excellence in disasters;
  • Increase state-wide and regional medical surge capacity;
  • Improve state-wide and regional situational awareness, such as the availability of hospital beds; and
  • Develop metrics and test the regional system’s capabilities.