On March 7th and 8th of 2007 authorities from federal, state, county, and municipal jurisdictions/agencies having mass migration response responsibilities (as per the Department of Homeland Security Operation Vigilant Sentry, as well as State and Local plans) initiated the last of a series of mass migration exercise events. The mission of the exercise was to “unify” a federal, state, and local response to effectively mitigate a catastrophic mass migration incident, similar to the Mariel Boatlift (125,000+ migrants) in 1980. The exercise included volunteers who visited a few local emergency departments with specific scripts describing an acute medical condition.
Objective
Describe the use of the ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics) system to detect unusual patterns of emergency department use during a full scale mass migration exercise in South Florida.