The Regional Disaster Health Response System: A Successful Model to Improve Healthcare Preparedness.

Abstract

The Regional Disaster Health Response System (RDHRS) first began in 2018 as a demonstration project designed to address persistent healthcare emergency preparedness and response challenges in the United States. Four RDHRS programs currently exist, aligning and improving healthcare disaster response plans and clinical capabilities across 24 of the 50 US states. They connect public and private partners across the healthcare continuum, ensuring healthcare systems are better prepared for the next catastrophic disaster impacting health systems and the communities they serve. As a convener and a center of specialty expertise, the RDHRS crosses healthcare system and jurisdictional boundaries to address the most significant regional healthcare preparedness and response needs, helping the nation be better prepared to care for the ill and injured in the next large-scale event or disaster. The program has demonstrated its value and success in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 pediatric tripledemic, intravenous supply disruption and shortage issues in 2024, and other regional healthcare emergencies, such as chemical incidents, while also improving plans and readiness for other potential threats such as mass burn events. Because the need for, and benefit of, an RDHRS program has been demonstrated through these recent events, there is a need to expand the network to cover the entire nation, further increasing healthcare readiness and our collective abilities to mitigate health system surge and respond to the next catastrophic emergency.