One of the HRSA Hospital Bioterrorism grant fund benchmarks requires each state to develop a process to credential and enable licensed individuals (nurses, physicians, EMTs) for a medical response to a disaster. In this project, individuals who wish to volunteer in advance for disaster response will be able to sign up in the MHMAS module. Under a credentialing function of this module, volunteer’s licenses will be cross-checked with the Department of Labor licensing database and a background check will be done. Approved volunteers will as approved and a credentialing card will be provided. Then as they respond to a facility with a need for additional licensed personnel, their current licensing status and credentials can be checked online with this module.

Also included in this schema is a non-credentialed function. This enables licensed and un-licensed personnel (IT specialists, security, ham radio operators) to volunteer in other roles in which credentialing is not necessary. Eg. Working security or communications for a Red Cross disaster assistance site.

Tracking for specialized groups of volunteers will be accommodated. Eg. Initial registration of Nurse Alert volunteers is being provided for in phase I, but Medical Response Teams, Citizen Volunteer Corp and EMTs with red cards are also other examples of important resources.

Tracking of resources other than ‘people resources’ is also essential and this module will be expanded to tracking information such as hospital bed capacity, decon capabilities and any other potential incident management resource.

Relationship / Integration With Other Modules:

• Integrates with the Resource and Disaster Status module
  
  
• Integrates with the System Tracking module
  
  
• Integrates with Incident Management module
  
  
• Integrates with Education Management System
  
  
• Integrate with the Department of Labor licensing module